Page 55 of The Staircase in the Woods

Nick scoffed.

“Sure, we all plant ourselves at this dinner table and enjoy a meal of half-eaten, just-moldy cake.” He swiped at the air, scattering a few flies that had found him. “It’ll be like our own little party.”

“I’m just saying maybe we should take a beat.”

“I’m just saying, the cake already smells bad.”

“I’m just saying,maybe it’s not a good idea—”

“There’s a thumb on the cake,” Owen said suddenly.

He was staring at something intently.

Lore looked, and sure enough, on the side opposite to Owen, the piece of cake had a severed thumb in it. Pressed into the icing, straight down—just before lopping it off.

The cut was clean, too.

The thumb was old. Not mummified old, but shriveled up. The blood dried to a rusty crinkle.

Hamish made a horrible sound in the back of his throat. A low, scared-animal whine. Owen just stared at the thumb, unblinking.

“It’s like someone mashed their thumb down into a piece of cake,” Nick said, “and then while it was there, they, or someone, sliced it clean off.”

“Wonder what kind of knife was used,” Owen asked idly.

Something tickled at the back of Lore’s brain stem.A knife, again. For the first time since coming here, Lore returned her mind to the fight they’d had. About her game.Theirgame, if you were to ask him. How mad was he at her? Would Owen try to hurt her? Would he ever try to hurt himself?

That thought seemed to scurry around her head. Like rats through ductwork.

“Well,” she said abruptly, “I think that’s a pretty good sign we should get the fuck out of this room. Something bad happened here, and I don’t want to be here anymore.”

“Sold,” Nick said. “Let’s tear those shelves out.”

“We don’t have to. This middle one—if we move all the shit out of it—is big enough for us to just crawl through.”

So the two of them got to work moving plates and glasses and a particularly ugly gravy boat onto the table, next to the slices of ruined cake. Owen sat staring numbly at the thumb, and Hamish remained at the door, standing a diligent vigil over it. Still shaking, still sweating.

Lore wanted to say,A little help over here?but decided against it. Those two were best where they were.

Finally, they got all the dinnerware off the middle shelf.

The gap between shelves was now a portal into the living room.

“Let’s go,” she said, casting one more look into that room to make sure it was, well,still there. It felt crazy. Of course it was still there. Marshie’s bedroom was still on the other side of the door, too, right?Could it be gone? Would it be different if they opened it? Sheburnedto find out, to waltz over there, shove Hamish out of the way, and fling it open, defiant in her curiosity. But then she remembered that girl rising up out from under the bed—all that blood, those cuts down her arms and along her throat, her sharp fingers. Lore felt sad for her, so sad it felt as if those fingers were pushing into her own heart and tearing it out.

But that sadness didn’t mean Lore wanted to meet her again, either.

Meanwhile—

Nick was already starting to wriggle through the gap.

“Hamish, Owen,” Lore said, again snapping her fingers. “C’mon.”

Owen stood, nodding silently as he lined up at the closet door.

“I can’t leave the door,” Hamish said. “If I do, she—shemight come in.”

“It’s locked. We gotta move.”

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