Page 136 of The Staircase in the Woods

It bled through Owen’s heart. Somehow, hers seemed the saddest to him, suddenly. Her pain was so simple, so clear, and they’d missed it this whole time: Lore was alone. Always alone. They barely ever saw her mother becauseshebarely ever saw her mother. Owen felt crushed by that revelation. He’d always joked it was cool she didn’t reallyhaveparents because his sucked so bad and none would be better than what he had, but was it? Lore went to bed every night wondering when her mother would come home. And sometimes she didn’t, he guessed. He understood Lore there better than he had in a long time.

Maybe ever.

Defiant now, Owen said, “You can’t shock us with this…shallow, derivative theater. We know who we are. Give us our friend back. Now.”

Lore nodded. “Fuck off, house.”

“Yeah,” Hamish said. “Nick, if you’re in there? Fight back, buddy. We know you can do it. We’re here, man. We’re here.”

Not-Nick chuckled again, and shrugged halfheartedly. “I didn’t think that would work. But that’s okay. I have one more thing to show you—and this,this,will be the thing that breaks your pretty minds like a baseball through a window.”

82

Matty Shiffman

Lights out again. Then on, once more. And Lore’s heart leapt into her throat as she saw Matty there, kneeling in front of Nick, facing them.

His arms were outspread, cruciform. Wire and lamp cord bundled together, wrapping around his wrists, anchoring against the walls of the Dreamboat house—for that house had returned fully, and their own automatons were gone.

Matty was only barely artificial—his teeth looked like keys, his eyes like little clocks. When he opened his mouth to moan in pain, Lore saw a staircase there, descending into the deep of his throat.

“He made it here, you know,” Not-Nick said.

“What?” Hamish asked.

“He made it all the way to this part of the house—to the heart of it. He fought me every step of the way. And I didn’t crack him.Couldn’tcrack him. I thought I could show him all the pressure his parents put on him, how they saw him as just an emblem of their own success—narcissists, they were. But he didn’t care. I thought I could show him how his sisters conspired against him, and that didn’t do it. Then I realized how good he was, how kind, and how he had a way of looking at the world thinking it should be fair, it should be kind—”

Always the paladin,Lore thought.

“And so I thought showing him how much misery went on in these rooms would break him. Murders and suicides, a tableau of pain and suffering, and still it did not crack him. He found thecrawlspace. He kept away from me. And he figured it out, same as you did. Break through. Find the final staircase. Come to the ol’ Dreamboat. And then, goodbye, Matthew Shiffman, enjoy your freedom. But I saw in his mind why he was doing it. Why he fought so hard. It was for all of you. He wanted to see you again. And there, his greatest strength—I realized then was also the thing I was going to use to hang him. And all I had to show him was how he fought for you—but you never fought for him. You all went your separate ways. You abandoned him. Left him alone here.With me.”

The Matty kneeling in front of them cried out in pain, his muscles spasming and contracting as his skull split open, side to side—

And from within his broken head, the model of monstrosity of a house rose. Victorian and Art Deco and Craftsman style crammed together at odd, impossible angles. It emerged and sat there, like somethinghatching,and his head slackened, drool oozing from his open mouth, blood rimming the edges of his fragmented face, shining and wet.

In horror, Lore realized that the toy house that popped free of his head had windows, and in one of those windows—

She saw Matty. Waving. A cruel little piece of puppet theater.

Part of her railed against this—this couldn’t be true, that it wasthemand their abandonment of him that let the house gain access to Matty. But in her heart, she knew it to be true. They had abandoned him. Hell,shehad abandoned him that night they found the staircase. Why? Because she felt stung that he hadn’t taken acid with her? That his commitment to her wasn’t, what, strong enough? She felt judged, she felt hurt, so she hurt him in turn, and then he ran up that fucking staircase to show her how he didn’t need her—even as she was wolfing down the acid, pretending thatshedidn’t needhim,didn’t needany of them,and that was when it all started.

Right there, in the woods, that night.

There was this moment of reckoning, where she stood still, shell-shocked by it all—

And that’s when Hamish roared in anger, and rushed at Nick.Hamish!Not-Nick’s hand shot out, closing hard on Hamish’s windpipe, lifting him handily up in the air. Ham’s legs kicked fruitlessly as his hands struggled to free himself from Nick’s grip. But Owen was already moving, following Hamish’s rush with one of his own—Lore screamed for him to stop, even as she was quietly proud of her old friend for running headlong into danger, even as Nick’s eyes fixed on him like a doom gaze. Not-Nick’s free hand lashed out—

Something was in that hand now.

A knife. Small. Its blade rusted and chipped.

It slashed across Owen’s face—

Lore screamed, running to him, even as he fell backward.

Not-Nick seethed, partly in his voice, partly in the voice of Alfred Shawcatch: “There,boy,a proper scar all can see, not the ones youhide.Be a man, Owen! Be a man and show the world your pain!” Then, as it shook Hamish like a rag doll, the man choking, his lips darkening, his face reddening: “Dying again, Hamish? Too bad, so sad.Show us all your pain, you soft, sad things.”

“Is that what this is?” Lore screamed at the Shawcatch Thing, as she dragged Owen backward, blood masking his face. “You showing your pain to the world? Another weak man inflicting his pain on everyone?”

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