House of Leaves (31 page)

At least the same guy who explained my attachment to junk, The Counselor For Disaffected You—I mean Youth—, helped me see how influenced I remained by my past.

Unfortunately it was a lesson delivered tongue in cheek, as he ultimately believed I’d made most of my past up just to impress him.

About one thing he was right, my mother wasn’t actually dead yet. Telling everyone she was though made my life far less complicated. I don’t think anyone at the boarding school, including my friends, teachers, certainly not my counselor, ever found out the truth, which was fine with me. That’s the way I liked it.

My arms, however, were another story. It’s kinda funny, but despite my current professional occupation, I don’t have any tattoos. Just the scars, the biggest ones of course being the ones you know about, this strange seething melt running from the inside of both elbows all the way up to the end of both wrists, where—I might as well tell you—a skillet of sizzling corn oil unloaded its lasting wrath on my efforts to keep it from the kitchen floor. ‘You tried to catch it all,’ my mother had often said of that afternoon when I was only four. See, not nearly as dramatic as a Japanese Martial Arts Cult run by Koreans in Indiana. I mean Idaho. Just a dropped pan. That’s all.

As for the rest of the scars, there are too many to start babbling on about here, jagged half—moon reminders on my shoulders and shins, plenty stippled on my bones, a solemn white one intersecting my eyebrow, another obvious ie still evident in my broken, now discolored front tooth, a central incisor to be more precise, and some ,en deeper than all of the above, telling a tale much longer than anyone has ever heard or probably ever will hear. All of it true too, though of course scars are much harder to read. Their complex inflections do not resemble the reductive ease of any tattoo, no matter how extensive, colorful or elaborate the design. Scars are the paler pain of survival, received unwillingly and displayed in the language of injury.

My Counselor For Disaffected Youth had no idea what kept me going— though he never phrased it exactly like that. He just asked me how, in light of all my stories, I’d still managed to sustain myself. I couldn’t answer him. I know one thing though, whenever I felt particularly bad I’d instantly cling a favorite daydream, one I was willing to revisit constantly, a pretty vivid one too, of a girl, a
ce
rtain girl, though one I’d yet to meet or even see, whose eyes would sparkle just like the Northern sky I would describe for her when once while sitting on a splintered deck heaving on top of the black-pitch ck of the world, I beheld all the light not of this
wo
rld.

Which was when, as I was briefly revisiting this me daydream in the presence of my two friends, I heard a voice in my ear—the ghost—softly saying my name.

By the way, this is what got me on this whole
thin
g in the first place. The knocking in the house turning this vivid recollection.

“Johnny” she said in a sigh even more gentle than a whisper.

I looked around. No one sitting at my table s saying anything even remotely like my name. Quite the contrary, their voices were pitched in me egregiously felt debate over something having do with scoring, the details which I know I’ll never call, thrown up amidst the equally loud banter of a hundred plates, glasses, knives and forks clattering here and there, and yes everywhere, serving to quickly dispel my illusion until it happened again—

“Johnny.”

For an instant then, I understood she was my ghost, a seventeen year old with gold braided hair, as wild as a will
-
o’-the-wisp, encountered many years ago, maybe even in another life, now encountered again, and perhaps here too to find me and restore me to some former self lost on some day no boy can ever really remember—something I write now not really even understanding though liking the sound of it just the same.

“He’s so dreamy. I just love the way he smiles when he talks, even if he doesn’t say that much.”

Which was when I realized, a moment later, that this Ghost was none other than the domed ceiling, rising above the dining hall, somehow carrying with particular vividness, from the far wall to my wall, in one magnificent arc, the confession of a girl I would never see or hear again, a confession I could not even respond to—except here, if this counts.

Sadly enough, my understanding of the rare acoustic dynamics in that hail came a fraction of a second too late, coinciding with the end of dinner, the voice vanishing as suddenly as it appeared, lost in a cumulative leaving, so that even as I continued to scan the distant edge of the dining room or the line forming to deposit trays, I could never find the girl whose expressions or even gestures might match such sentiments.

Of course, ghostly voices don’t just have to rely exclusively on domed ceilings. They don’t even have to be just voices.

I finally hooked up with Ashley. I went over to her place yesterday morning. Early. She lives in Venice. Her eyebrows look like flakes of sunlight. Her smile, I’m sure, burnt Rome to the ground. And for the life of me I didn’t know who she was or where we’d met. For a moment I wondered if she was that voice. But before she said even a word, she held my hand and led me through her house to a patio overgrown with banana trees and rubber plants. Black, decomposing leaves covered the ground but a large hammock hung above it all.

We sat down together and I wanted to talk. I wanted to ask her who she was, where we’d met, been before, but she just smiled and held my hand as we sat down on the hammock and started to swing above all those dead leaves. She kissed me once and then suddenly sneezed, a tiny beautiful sneeze, which made her smile even more and my heart started hurting because I couldn’t share her happiness, not knowing what it was, or why it was or who for that matter I was—to her. So I lay there hurting, even when she sat on top of me, covering me in the folds of her dress, and her with no underwear and me doing nothing as her hands briefly unbuttoned my jeans and pulled me out of my underwear, placing me where it was rough and dry, until she sank down without a gasp, and then it was wet, and she was wet, and we were wet, rocking together beneath a small patch of overcast sky, brightening fast, her eyes watching the day come, one hand kneading her dress, the other hand under her dress needing herself, her blonde hair covering her face, her knees tightening around my ribs, until she finally met that calendrical coming without a sound—the only sign—and then even though I had not come, she kissed me for the last time and climbed out of the hammock and went inside.

Before I left she told me our story: where we’d met—Texas—kissed, but never made love and this had confused her and haunted her and she had needed to do Lt before she got married which was in four months to man she loved who made a living manufacturing TNT exclusively for a highway construction firm up in Colorado where he frequently went on business trips and where one night, drunk, angry and disappointed he had invited a hooker back to his motel room and so on and who cared and what was I doing there anyway? I Left, considered jerking off, finally got around to
Lt
back at my place though in order to pop I had to think of Thumper. It didn’t help. I was still hurting, abandoned, drank three glasses of bourbon and fumed on some weed, then came here, thinking of voices, real and imagined, of ghosts, my ghost, of her, at long last, in this idiotic footnote, when she gently pushed me out her door and I said quietly “Ashley” causing her to stop pushing me and ask “yes?” her eyes bright with something she saw that I could never see though what she saw was me, and me not caring though now at least knowing the truth and telling her the truth: “I’ve never been to Texas.”]

Wax, for his part, tries to be brave, forcing a smile hr the camera, even if it is impossible to miss how pale ie looks or misunderstand the meaning of his request— ‘Jed, man, I’m so thirsty”—especially since a few
seconds
earlier he had swallowed a big gulp of water.

No stranger to shock, [
^||
“The following definition is from
Medicine for Mountaineering,
3
^rd
edition. Edited by James A. Wilkerson, M.D. (Seattle: The Mountaineers, 1985), P. 43:

“Mild shock results from loss of ten to twenty percent of blood volume. The patient appears pale and his skin feels cool, first over the extremities and later over the trunk. As shock becomes more severe, the patient often complains of feeling cold and he is often thirsty. A rapid pulse and reduced blood pressure may be present. However, the absence of these signs does not indicate shock is not present since they may appear rather late, particularly in previously healthy young adults.

“Moderate shock results from loss of twenty to forty percent of the blood volume. The signs characteristic of mild shock are present
and may become more severe. The pulse is typically fast and weak or
‘
thready.’ In addition, blood flow to the kidneys is reduced as the available blood is shunted to the heart and brain and the urinary output declines. A urinary volume of less than 30 cc per hour is a late indication of moderate shock. In contrast to the dark, concentrated urine observed with dehydration, the urine is usually a light color.

“Severe shock results from loss of more than forty percent of the blood volume and is characterized by signs of reduced blood flow to the brain and heart. Reduced cerebral blood flow initially produces restlessness and agitation, which is followed by confusion, stupor and eventually coma and death. Diminished blood flow to the heart can produce abnormalities of the cardiac rhythm
.”

In his essay “Critical Condition” published in
Simple Themes
(Univer
si
ty of Washington Press, 1995) Brendan Beinhorn declared that Navidson’s
h
ouse, when the explorers were within it, was in a state of severe shock. “
However
without
them, it is completely dead. Humanity
se
rves as its life blood. Humanity’s, end would
m
ark the hous
e’s end.” A statement which provo
ked
sociologist Sondra Staff to claim “Critical
C
ondition” was “just another sheaf of Beinhorn
b
ullshit.” (A lecture delivered at Our Lady of the
L
ake University of San Antonio on June 26, 1996.)
]
Jed immediately raises Wax’s legs to increase blood flow to the head, uses pocket heaters and a solar blanket to keep him warm, and never stops reassuring him, smiling, telling jokes, promising a hundred happy endings. A difficult task under any circumstances. Nearly impossible when those guttural cries soon find them, the walls too
thin to hold any of it back, sounds
too obscene to be shut out, Holloway
screaming like some rabid
animal, no longer a man but a creature
stirred by fear, pain, and rage.

“At least he’s far off,” Jed
whispers in an effort to console
Wax.

But the sound of distance
brings little comfort to either one.

Perhaps [165—
Mr. Truant refused to reveal whether
the
following bizarre textual layout is
Z
ampanô’s or his own. — Ed.
]

here

is as good a place as any to consider some of the ghosts haunting
The Navidson Record.
And since more than a handful of people have pointed out similarities between Na
vidson’s film and various com
mercial productions, it seems worthwhile to at least briefly examine what distinguishes documentaries from Hollywood releases.
[
1
66—In his essay “It Makes No Difference”
Film Quarterly
v.8, July, 1995, p. 68, Daniel Rosenblum wrote: “In response to the suggestion that the names of the ghosts haunting Navidson’s house are none other than
The Shining, Vertigo, 20021, Brazil, Lawrence of Arabia, Poltergeist, Amityville Horror, Night of the Living Dead, The Exorcist
, John Carpenter’s
The Thing, Labyrinth, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Das Boot, Taxi Driver, Crime and Misdemeanors, Repulsion, Fantastic Voyage, Forbidden Planet, C’est arrive pres de chez vous
, or even The Abyss, I hasten to point out that each one of the above mentioned movies ultimately resorts to some form of delusion, whether reincarnation, phobia, ascent to godhood, paranoia, desert, reverse affirmation of spiritual perdurability ibid, ibid, ibid, ibid, title, totemic assumption, submarine, absence of past, vision, psychosis, technology, ibid, serial killer or aliens. All of which
The Navidson Record
refuses to indulge.] [167—In her elegantly executed piece entitled “Vertical Influence” reproduced in
Origins of Faith
(Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996) p. 261, Candida Hayashi writes: “For that matter, what of literary haunting? Poe’s
The Fall of the House of Usher
, Shirley Jackson’s
The Haunting
, Charles Brockden Brown’s
Wieland
, Walker Percy’s
The Moviegoer
, Stephen King’s “The Breathing Method” in
Different Seasons
as well as “Tebular” in
More Tales
, Steve Erickson’s
Days Between Stations
, John Fante’s
The Road to Los Angeles
, not to mention Henri Bosco’s
L’Antiquaire
, Salman Rushdie’s
Satanic Verses
, B. Walton’s
Cave of Danger
, Jean Genet’s
Notre-Dame des Fleurs
, Richard Farina’s
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me
, John Gardner’s
October Light
, many stories by Lovecraft, Pynchon’s gator patrol in
V
, Borges’ “The Garden of Forking Paths” in
Ficciones
, Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness
, Lawrence Weschler’s
Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder
, Jim Kalin’s
One Worm
, Sartre’s
Huis Clos
, or Les Mouches
, Jules Verne’s
Journey to the Center of the Earth
, Lem’s
Solaris
, Ayn Rand’s
The Fountainhead
, “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” or
The House of Seven Gables
, or
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
by C. C. Lewis? To say nothing of
Brodsky & Utkin
, Friday Kahlo’s “Blue House” in Coyoacan, Diego Rivera’s “Nocturnal Landscape: Paisaje Nocturno” (1947), Rachel Whiteread’s
House
or Charles Ray’s
Ink Box
, Bill Viola’s
Room for St. John of the Cross
or more words by Robert Venturi, Aldo van Eyck, James Joyce, Paolo Portoghesi, Herman Melville, Otto Friedrich Bollnow (
Mensch und Raum
, 1963), and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (
The Phenomenology of Perception
, 1962, in which he declares “depth is the most ‘existential’ of all dimensions”)? To all of it, I have only one carefully devised response: Ptooey!”] [
168
—
Aside from cinematic, literary, architectural, or even philosophical ghosts, history also offers a few of its own. Consider two famous expeditions where those involved confronted the unknown under circumstances of deprivation
and fear only to soon find themselves caught
in a squall of terrible violence.
]