Page 52 of The Staircase in the Woods

Pulsating.

“I don’t like this,” Hamish said to the others. “What do I—”

The girl moaned a terrible sound, a despairing, hateful sound, and her fingers were sharp, now, sharp like broken bone, and she moved fast,so fast,the whole of her body summoned to Hamish as if she were not walking or running but ratherfloating forwardon the bent curls of her toes—

Hamish ducked and lurched forward, the girl’s sharp fingerscutting the air above him—he scrambled forward, first on the floor, then over the edge of the bed, toward the bedroom door. Lore wanted to stay, in a way. Wanted to talk to the girl. But she knew it was smarter to go. Nick was following Hamish through the doorway, and Lore trailed after even as the girl moaned and wept, blood spattering on the carpet, on the walls.

In the next room, Hamish crashed forward into the dining room table, the plates of cake sliding toward the edge. The words gabbled out of him: “Closethedoorclosethedoor—”

Lore turned to do just that.

But it was then she realized.

Owen hadn’t come through with them.

32

Linger Longer

Owen could still feel it in his hand, the Old Timer penknife. It had two blades—one longer, pointier, with what he thought was a cool angle to it. Aclip point blade,it was called. The second was smaller, apen blade. Each opened at opposite ends. He always felt the smaller blade, the pen blade, was strange—too short, too stumpy, to be of much use anywhere.

(That’s why it was the one he always used.)

He still remembered buying that knife. He’d gone to a flea market with his father that morning over across from Peddler’s Village. Owen hoped to love something someday the way his father loved flea markets, and he went with him every week because it was one of the few times he might see his father be happy, one of the few times when he wasn’t yelling at him, when he wasn’t sad or angry or fed up with his son and his wife and the world around him. At the flea market, Edgar Zuikas would be generous, too, buying for his son most of whatever the boy wanted: old comic books, used paperbacks, some weirdStar Warstoy.

At the market, every week, they passed by a table operated by a man with a big bushy black beard and long hair pulled back in a ponytail, and this table was a bounty of violent delights: ninja stars and nunchucks and M80 firecrackers, empty hand grenades and stun guns and Zippo lighters. (It’s where Nick bought his Jack Kenny–branded lighter.) Plus, there was always a big Plexiglas casefullof knives: Swiss Army knives, weird fucked-up fantasy daggers, huntingknives, kunai throwing daggers, and of course, switchblades and butterfly knives.

One day, when he was twelve years old, Owen got it in his head that he wanted a knife of his own.

So he asked his father, and Edgar said, to his shock, “Sure. Boy like you could use a good knife.” And so they went to the bearded man’s table.

Owen said that he wanted one of the butterfly knives.

And his father laughed, said no, that’s not the knife for him. “Flipping that thing around, you’ll cut your goddamn pinky finger off. No, I think something like this is more your speed—” And Edgar Zuikas pointed to the Schrade two-blade Old Timer penknife at the very bottom of the case, a knife that was hard to see given how it was obscured by the much larger, flashier blades in the case.

Owen knew not to fight his father on this.

And a knife was a knife was a knife.

So he said okay, and his father bought that Old Timer penknife for Owen. Upon conclusion of the sale, the bearded man said, and this is another thing Owen would never forget, “ ‘And the angel sent his blade into the earth, and the vine of the earth was cut.’ Book of Revelation, dontchaknow. Jesus is Lord and Jesus is among us, thank you for your purchase, friends.” Owen’s father, not a particularly religious man, just said “Okay, thanks, pal,” and off they went.

That memory came back to him full-fledged, in Technicolor stereo sound, as he stood there in Marshie’s room, staring at the blood-soaked suicide girl.

Even as the others fled—

Owen remained.

He eased toward the door, Lore having already fled through it—

But paused.

The girl was at the wall where Hamish stood, and she clawed at it, wailing and thrashing about. Then she froze, and slowly, her head craned toward him.

“Do you love me?” she asked in a small, raspy kitten’s voice.

“The knife,” he said quietly. “The knife you used. The photo, on the computer—” He gestured toward the screen, but found nothing on it. The glass had cracked in a spiderweb pattern.But it had just been on…

“Knife,” she repeated. Then in her hand, there one appeared, suddenly—

---