Authors: Mark Z. Danielewski
It’s a miracle.
And that’s that.
September 23, 1998
Doc and his wife took me out to Deception Pass where we looked down into the gorge. We all watched a bald eagle glide beneath the bridge. For some reason no one said a word.
September 27, 1998
I’m healthy and strong. I can run two miles in under twelve minutes. I can sleep nine hours straight. I’ve forgotten my mother. I’m back on track. And yet even though I’m now on my way to LA to start a new life—the guns in my trunk long since gone, replaced with a year’s supply of that miraculous yellow shine—when I said goodbye to my friends this morning I felt awful and soaked in sorrow. Much more than I expected.
Standing side by side in their driveway, they looked like a couple of newlyweds about to run off to Paris, the kind you see in movies, racing down the dock, birdseed in their hair, climbing into a seaplane, heading out over the Sound, maybe even towards a bridge, perhaps there’s even a moment where everyone wonders if they’re high enough to even make it over the bridge, and then like that they do and their story begins. Good people. Very good people. Even as I started the car they were still asking me to stay.
September 28, 1998
Portland. Dusk. Walked under the Hawthorne bridge and sat by the Willamette river. Carrot juice and tofu for dinner. No, that’s not right, more like a 7-Eleven burrito. Got ready to take my yellow shine tablet but for some reason—now what the hell’s that about?—I’d forgotten to put one in my pocket.
I walked back to where I’d parked. My car was gone. Someone had stolen it.
No. My car was still there. Right where I’d parked it.
I opened the trunk. It was icy dark. No tablets of any kind to be found anywhere. Certainly not a year’s supply. Like I said—icy dark. Empty, except for the faint glint of two guns lying side by side next to a Weatherby 300 magnum.
September 29, 1998
Are you fucking kidding me? Did you really think any of that was true? September 2 thru September 28? I just made all that up. Right out of thin air. Wrote it in two hours. I don’t have any friends who are doctors, let alone friends who are doctors. You must have guessed that. At least the lack of expletives should have clued you in. A sure sign that something was amiss.
And if you bought that Yellow-Tablet-Of-Shine stuff, well then you’re fucking worse off than I am.
Though here’s the sadder side of all this, I wasn’t trying to trick you. I was trying to trick myself, to believe, even for two lousy hours, that I really was lucky enough to have two such friends, and doctors too, who could help me, give me a hand, feed me tofu, make me exercise, administer a miracle drug, cure my nightmares. Not like Lude with all his pills and parties and con-talk street-smack. Though I sure do miss Lude. I wonder how he is. Should be out of the hospital by now. Wonder if he’s rich yet. It’s been months since I’ve seen him. I don’t even know where the last month went. I had to make something up to fill the disconcerting void. Had to.
Right now I’m in Los Gatos, California. Los Gatos Lodge in fact. I managed a couple hours of sleep until a nightmare left me on the floor, twitching like an imbecile. Sick with sweat. I switched on the TV but those channels offered only the expected little.
I went outside. Tried taking in the billions of stars above, lingering long enough to allow each point of light the chance to scratch a deep hole in the back of my retina, so that when I finally did turn to face the dark surrounding forest I thought I saw the billion eyes of a billion cats blinking out, in the math of the living, the sum of the universe, the stories of history, a life older than anyone could have ever imagined. And even after they were gone—fading away together, as if they really were one—something still lingered in those sweet folds of black pine, sitting quietly, almost as if it too were waiting for something to wake.
October 19, 1998
Back in LA. Went to my storage unit and retrieved the book. Sold my car. Checked into an awful hotel. A buck and a quarter a week. One towel. One hot plate. Asked the clerk if he could give me a room that wasn’t next to anyone. He just shook his head. Didn’t say anything. Didn’t look at me either. So I explained about the nightmares and how they make me scream alot. That made him say something, though he still didn’t look at me, just stared at the formica counter and told me I wouldn’t be alone. He was right. More than a few people around here scream in their sleep.
Tried calling Lude. No luck.
October 24, 1998
Called Thumper today. She was so happy to hear from me she invited me over for dinner tomorrow night, promised me the works, home cooked food and hours of uninterrupted private time. I warned her that I hadn’t been to a laundromat in a long while. She said I could use her washing machine. Even take a shower if I liked.
Still nothing from Lude.
October 25, 1998
Lude’s dead.
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November 2, 1998
Alas to leave. For this all has been a great leaving. Of sorts. Hasn’t it?
November 11, 1998
Far from the city now. Bus rattling the low heavens with its slow wayless trek into the desert. Dusty people, fat people, forgotten people crowding the seats and aisles. Sack lunches, snores and the dull look that comes to faces when they’re glad to be leaving but in no great hurry to arrive.
At least I have a little money now. I pawned the weapons before I left. The guy gave me eight- fifty for all three. He wouldn’t spare a cent on the bullets, so I kept them and tossed them in a dumpster behind a photolab.
After going back to Kinko’s—that took awhile— and then taking a trip to the Post Office—that took even longer—, I went to see my crush for the last time.
Is that what she is?
More like a fantasy, I guess. Probably best spelled with “ph.” A phantastic hope. The enchanting ecdysiast who that night, at long last, gave me her real name.
I can’t quite explain how good it was to see her. I had to wait awhile but it was worth it. I was out back, all the more happy when I saw she was wearing the braided gold necklace I’d given her.
See, I told you my boss would get it to her. He knew I wasn’t kidding when I told him I’d burn his life down if he didn’t. Even if I had been kidding.
She said she never took it off.
We didn’t talk long. She had to return to her stage and I had a bus to catch. She quickly told me about her child and how she’d broken off her relationship with the boxer. Apparently, he couldn’t take the crying. She was also starting laser surgery to get her tattoos removed.
I apologized about missing dinner and told her— what the fuck did I tell her? Things, I guess. I told her about things. I could see her get all nervous but she was also enticed.
Nightmares have that quality, don’t they?
She reached out and gently brushed my eyebrow with her fingertips, still hurting from good old Gdansk Man. For a moment I was tempted. I could read the signs well enough to know she wanted a kiss. She’d always been fluent in that language of affection but I could also see that over the years, years of the same grammar, she’d lost the chance to understand others. It surprised me to discover I cared enough about her to act now on that knowledge, especially considering how lonely I was. I gave her an almost paternal hug and kissed her on the cheek. Above us airplanes roared for the sky. She told me to keep in touch and I told her to take care and then as
I
walked away, I waved and with that bid adieu to The Happiest Place On Earth.
August 28, 1999
Only yesterday, I arrived in Flagstaff, Arizona where trains routinely stop so the homeless can climb off and buy coffee for a dime at a little train yard shop across the tracks. That’s really all it costs too. For seventy-five cents you can have a bowl of soup and for another dime a slice of bread. I steered clear of the coffee and bought myself dinner for under a buck. However instead of climbing back on the freight car, I wandered off, eventually stumbling upon a park with some benches where I could sit down and enjoy my meal, my mind for some reason suddenly consumed with thoughts of Europe. Paris quays, London parks. Other days.
As I ate, someone’s radio kept me company until I realized it wasn’t a radio at all but live music spilling out the back door of a bar.
I only had three dollars and some change. More than likely the cover would keep me from entering. I decided to try anyway. At the very least, I could linger outside and listen to a few songs.
Surprisingly enough, I encountered no one at the door. Still, since the place was half empty, I figured someone would spot me soon enough, stop me before I reached a barstool, start poking me for money. No one did. When the bartender came over to take my order, I straight up explained how much I had, figuring that would be enough to get me escorted out.
“No worries,” he said. “There’s no door charge and tonight beer’s only a buck.”
I immediately ordered three for the band and a water for myself, and what do you know, a little later the bartender came back with a beer on the house. Apparently I’d been the first one that night to buy the musicians a drink which was strange and pretty fucked up too, especially since it was such a cheap night and they were actually pretty good.
Anyway I kicked back and began listening to the songs, enjoying the strange melodies and wild, nearly whimsical words. The bartender eventually noticed that I hadn’t touched my drink and offered to exchange it for something else. I thanked him and asked for a gingerale, which he got for me, taking the beer for himself.
We were still talking, talking about Flagstaff, the bar, the trains, me sharing some cross country stories, him confiding a few of his own predicaments, when out of the blue some very weird lyrics spiked through our conversation. I whipped around, listening again, concentrating, convinced I’d made a mistake, until I heard it once more:
“I
live at the end of a Five and a Half Minute Hallway.”
I couldn’t believe my ears.
When the set finished, I approached the trio, all three of them, probably because of the way I looked and smelled, acting very suspicious and wary until the bartender introduced me as the source of their recently acquired and hastily imbibed beverage. Well that changed everything. Barley and hops make for remarkable currency.
We started chatting. As it turned out, they were from Philadelphia and had been touring from coast to coast all summer. They called themselves Liberty Bell.
“Cracked. Get it?” howled the guitar player. Actually all three of them were pretty glib about their music, until I asked about “The Five and a Half Minute Hallway.”
“Why?” the bass player said sharply, the other two immediately getting very quiet.
“Wasn’t it a movie?” I stammered back, more than a little surprised by how fast the mood had just shifted.
Fortunately, after studying me for a moment, presumably making one of those on-the-spot decisions, the drummer shook his head and explained that the lyrics were inspired by a book he’d found on the Internet quite some time ago. The guitar player walked over to a duffel bag lying behind one of their Vox
amps.
After digging around for a second he found what he was searching for.
“Take a look for yourself,” he said, handing me a big brick of tattered paper. “But be careful,” he added in a conspiratorial whisper. “It’ll change your life.”
Here’s what the title page said:
House of Leaves
by Zampanô
with introduction and
notes by Johnny Truant
Circle Round A Stone Publication
First Edition
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
As it turned out, not only had all three of them read it but every
now and then in some new city someone in the audience would hear the song about the hallway and come up to talk to them after the show. Already, they had spent many hours with complete strangers shooting the shit about Zampanô’s work. They had discussed the footnotes, the names and even the encoded appearance of Thamyris on page 387, something I’d transcribed without ever detecting.
Apparently they wondered alot about Johnny Truant. Had he made it to Virginia? Had he found the house? Did he ever get a good night’s sleep? And most of all was he seeing anyone? Did he at long last find the woman who would love his ironies? Which shocked the hell out of me. I mean it takes some pretty impressive back-on-page-117 close-reading to catch that one.
During their second set, I thumbed through the pages, virtually every one marked, stained and red— lined with inquiring and I thought frequently inspired comments. In a few of the margins, there were even some pretty stunning personal riffs about the lives of the musicians themselves. I was amazed and shocked and suddenly very uncertain about what I had done. I didn’t know whether to feel angry for being so out of the loop or sad for having done something I didn’t entirely understand or maybe just happy about it all. There’s no question I cherished the substance of those pages, however imperfect, however incomplete. Though in that respect they were absolutely complete, every error and unfinished gesture and all that inaudible discourse, preserved and intact. Here now, resting in the palms of my hands, an echo from across the years.
For a while I wrestled with myself over whether or not to tell the band who I was, but finally, for whatever reason, decided against it, returning their book with a simple thank you. Then finding myself very sleepy, I wandered back into the park, wrapped myself up in my brown corduroy coat with new buttons I’d personally sewed on—this time using entire spools of thread to make sure they would never fall off again—and stretched out beneath an old ash tree, resting my head on the earth, listening to the music as it continued to break from the bar, healing my fatigue, until at long last I drifted off to a dream where I was soaring far above the clouds, bathed in light, flying higher and higher, until finally I fell into a sleep no longer disturbed by the past.
A short while ago a great big gray coated husky emerged out of nowhere and started sniffing my clothes, nudging my arm and licking my face as if to assure me that though there was no fire or hearth, the night was over and the month was August and nothing close to seventy below would threaten me. After petting him for a few minutes, I walked with him around the park. He sprinted after birds while I stretched the sleep out of my legs. Even as I scribble this down, he insists on sitting by my side, ears twitching occasionally in the dawn air, while before us a sky as dark as a bruised plum slowly unfolds into morning.
Inside me, I still feel a strange and oddly familiar sorrow, one which I suspect will be with me for some time, twining around the same gold that was once at the heart of my horror, before she appeared before him and spoke the rain into a wind. At least though, it’s getting milder, a gentle breeze filling in from the south. Flagstaff appears deserted and the bar’s closed and the band’s gone, but I can hear a train rattling off in the distance. It will be here soon, homeless climbing off for a meal, coffee for a dime, soup for three quarters and I have some change left. Something warm sounds good, something hot. But I don’t need to leave yet. Not yet. There’s time now. Plenty of time.
And
somehow I know it’s going to be okay. It’s going to be alright. It’s going to be alright.