Authors: Mark Z. Danielewski
“We’re heading home now,” Jed snaps.
“Fuck you,” Holloway barks. “I give the orders ere, and I say no one’s going anywhere yet.” Which
c
onsidering the circumstances are pretty bizarre words be hearing in such regions of dark.
“Look dude,” Wax
tries, doing his best to lure H
olloway over to their side of sense. “Let’s just check in o we can resupply and, you kno
w… uh … get more guns.”
“I will not abort this mission” Holloway responds
s
harply, jabbing an angry finger at the twenty-six year Id from Aspen, Colorado.
Easily as much attention has been given to Hol
lo
way’s use of the word “abort” as to Navidson’s use of le word “outpost.” The implication in “abort” is the
failure
to attain a goal—the prey not killed, the peak not limbed. As if there could
have been a final objective in th
at place. Initially Holloway’s only goal was to reach ie bottom of the
staircase (which he achieved). W
hether it was the growl or the expurgating qualities of e house or something entirely else, Holloway decided redefine that goal mid-way. Jed and Wax, however,
u
nderstand that to begin hunting some elusive presence
now is just the same as suicide. Without another word, they both turn around and start heading back to the stairs.
Holloway refuses to follow them. For a while, he rants and raves, screaming profanities at a blue streak, until finally and abruptly, he just storms off by himself, vanishing into the blackness. It is another peculiar event which is over almost before it starts. A sudden enfilade of “fuck you’s” and “shit-heads” followed by
silence. [
159
—
This is not the first time individuals exposed to total darkness in an unknown space have suffered adverse psychological effects, Consider what happened to an explorer entering the Sarawak Chamber discovered in the Multi mountains In Borneo. This chamber measures 2,300ft long, 1 ,300ft wide, averages a height of 230ft, and is large enough to contain over 17 football fields. When first entering the chamber, the party of explorers kept close to a wall assuming incorrectly that they were following a long, winding passageway. It was only when they chose to return by striking straight out into that blackness—expecting to run into the opposite wall—that they discovered the monstrous size of that cavern: “So the trio marched Out into the dark expanse, maintaining a compass course through a maze of blocks and boulders until they reached a level, sandy plain, the signature of an underground chamber. The sudden awareness of the immensity of the black void caused one of the cavers to suffer an acute attack of agoraphobia, the fear of open spaces. None of the three would later reveal who panicked, since silence on such matters is an unwritten law among
cavers.” Planet Earth: Underground Worlds
p. 26-27.
Of course, Holloway’s reactions exceed a perfectly understandable case of agoraphobia.
]
Back on the staircase, Jed
and Wax wait for Holloway to cool
off and return. When several hours
pass and there is still no sign of him,
they make a brief foray into the
area, calling out his name, doing
everything in their power to locate
him and bring him back. Not only
do they not find him, they do not
come across a single neon marker or
even a shred of fishing line. Holloway
has run off blind.
We watch as Jed and Wax
make camp and try to force themselves
to sleep for a few hours. Perhaps they hope time will magically reunite the team. But the morning of the seventh day only brings more of the same. No sign of Holloway, a terrifying shortage of supplies, and a very ugly decision to make.
Hank Leblarnard has devoted several pages on the guilt both men suffered when they decided to
head back without Holloway. [
160
—
Hank Leblarnard’s
Griefs Explorations
(Atlanta: More Blue Publications, 1994).
]
Nupart Jhunisdakazcriddle also analyzes the tragic nature of their action, pointing out that in the end, “Holloway chose his course. Jed and Wax waited for him and even made a
n
oble effort to find him. At 5:02 A.M., as the Hi 8
testifies
, their only opti
on was to return without him.”
[161—Nupart Jhunisdakazcriddle’s
Killing Badly, Dying Wise
(London: Apophrades Press, 1996), p. 92.]
As Jed and Wax resume their climb back up the
s
piral Staircase, they discover every neon marker they ,ft behind has been torn apart. Furthermore the higher
they get, the more the markers have been devoured. Around this time, Jed also begins to notice how more than a few of his buttons have vanished. Strips of velcro have fallen off his parka, shoe laces have shredded forcing him to bind his boots together with duck tape. Amazingly enough, even his pack frame has “crumbled”—the word Jed uses.
“It’s kind of scary” Wax mutters in the middle of a long ramble. “Like you stop thinking about something and it vanishes. You forget you have pocket zippers and pow they’re
gone. Don’t take nothing for granted ere.”
Jed keeps wonde
ring aloud: “Where the hell is [H
olloway]?” and silence keeps trying to mean an answer.
An hour later, Jed and Wax reach another cache, laced out of the way against the wall at the far end of a air, near the entrance to some unexplored corridor.
N
othing remains of the food and fuel but the jug of rater is perfectly intact. Wax is back for a second chug, ‘hen the crack of a rifle
drops him to the floor, blood im
mediately gushing from his left armpit.
“Oh my god! Oh my god!” Wax screams. “My
arm
—Oh god Jed help me, I’m bleeding!” Jed immedi
a
tely crouches next to Wax’s side and applies pressure to e wound. Moments later, Holloway emerges from the ark corridor with his r
ifle in hand. He seems just as sh
ocked by the sight of these
two as he is by the sight of the
stairs.
“How the hell did I get here?” he blurts out incoherently. “I thought it was that, that thing. Fuck. It
was
th
at thing. I’m sure of i
t. That awful fucking… fuck.”
“Don’t stand there. Help him!” Jed yells. This
se
ems to snap Holloway out of his trance—at least for a
li
ttle while. He helps Jed pe
al off Wax’s jacket and treat the
wound. Fortunately they are not unprepared. Jed as a medical supply kit loaded with gauze, ace
b
andages, disinfectant, ointments, and so
me painkillers. H
e forces two pills into Wax’s mouth but the ensuing cut
shows that only some of Wax’s agony has subsided.
Jed starts to tell Holloway what they will have to do in order to carry Wax the remainder of the way up.
“Are you crazy?” Holloway suddenly shouts. “I can’t go back now. I
just shot someone.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Jed tries to say as calmly
as possible. “It was an accident.”
Holloway sits down. “It
doesn’t matter. I’ll go to jail. I’ll
lose everything. I have to think.”
“Are you kidding me? He’ll
die if you don’t help me carry him!”
“I can’t go to prison,” Holloway
mumbles, more to himself
now than to either Wax or Jed. “I
just can’t.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jed
says, starting to raise his voice.
“You’re not gonna go to jail. But if
you
sit there and let Wax die, for
that they’ll lock you up for life. And
I’ll make sure they throw away the fucking key. Now get up and help me.”
Holloway does struggle to his feet, but instead of giving Jed a hand, he just walks away, disappearing once again into that impenetrable curtain of black, leaving Jed to carry and care for Wax by himself. For whatever reason, departure suddenly became Holloway’s only choice.
Une solution politique honorable.
[162—“An honorable political solution’—and as usual, pretentious as all fuck. Why French? Why not English? It also doesn’t make much sense. Nothing about Holloway’s choice or Jed’s request seems even remotely political.]
Jed does not get very far with Wax before two bullets smash into a nearby wall. Holloway’s helmet light reveals that he is standing on the opposite side of the stairway.
Jed instantly turns off his flashlight and with Wax on his back scrambles up a few stairs. Then by
rapidly cl
ickin
g
his flashlight on and off, he discovers a narrow hallway branching off the stairway into unseen depths. Unfortunately another shot instantly answers this fractionary bit of vision, the bang echoing over and over again through the pitch.
As we can see Jed does succeed in dragging Wax into this new corridor, the next Hi 8 clip capturing him with his flashlight back on, moving through a series of tiny rooms. Occasionally we hear the faint crack of a rifle shot in the distance, causing Jed to push ahead even faster, darting through as many chambers as possible, until his breath rasps painfully in and out of his lungs and he is forced to put his friend down, unable for the moment to go any farther.
Jed just slides to the floor, turns off his light, and starts to sob.
At 3:31 A.M. the camera blips on again. Jed has moved Wax to another room. Realizing the camcorder may be his only chance to provide an explanation for what happened, Jed now speaks directly into it, reiterating the events leading up to Holloway’s break with reality and how exhausted, pursued, and ultimately lost, Jed - has still somehow managed to carry,
drag, and push Wax to a relatively safe place. Unfortunately, he no longer has any idea where they are:
“So much for my sense of direction. I’ve spent the last hour looking for a way back to the staircase. No luck. The radio is useless. If help doesn’t come soon, he’ll die. I’ll die.”
Barely caught in the frame, we can just make out Jed’s fist rapping incessantly against the floor, which as it turns out, has the exact same timbre as those knocks heard back in the living room. Alan P. Winnett, however, remarks on one
notable difference:
Curiously enough, despite the similarity
of intonation and pitch, the
pattern does not even remotely
resemble the three short — three long— three short SOS signal heard by
the Navidson
& Carlos Avital has
suggested the house itself not only
carried the signal an incredible distance
but interpreted it as well.
Maria Hulbert disagrees, positing
that the rhythm of the knocking
hardly matters: “By the eighth day,
the absence of any word from Holloway’s
team was already a distress
signal in and of itself.” [1
63
—Al
an P. Winnett’s
Heaven’s Door
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), p.
452.
Also see Carlos Avital’s wide
ly read though somewhat prolix p
amphlet
Acoustic Intervention
(Boston: Berklee College of Music, 1994) as A’eil as Maria Hulbert’s “Knock Knock, Who Cares?” in
The Phenomenology o
f Coincidence in
The Navidson Record
(Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota
Press, 1996).
]
Regardless of its
meaning and the reasons behind its
transfiguration, Jed only produces this strange tattoo
for
a short time before
returning to the needs of his b
adly wounded friend.
[164—Once, in the dining hail of a certain boarding school—it was my second and nothing
fancy—I
met a ghost. I’d been talking with two friends, but due to all the seven o’clock din, the place being packed with fellow gorgers, it was almost impossible to hear much of what anyone said, unless you shouted, and we weren’t shouting because our conversation had to be kept secret. Not that what we said offered a whole lot of anything new. Not even variation.
Girls.
That was all. One word to pretty much sum up the whole of all we cared about. Week in, week out. Where to meet them. What to say to them. How not to need them. That was unattractive. Girls could never know you needed them, which was why our conversation had to be kept secret, because that’s all it was about: needing them.
Back then, I was living life like a ghost, though not the ghost I’m about to tell you about. I was all numb & stupid and dazed too I guess, a pretty spooky silentiary for matters I knew by heart but could never quite translate for anyone I knew let alone myself. I constantly craved the comforts of feminine attention, even though the thought of actually getting a girlfriend, one who was into me and wanted to be with me, seemed about as real as any dozen of the myths I’d been reading about in class.