Page 57 of The Staircase in the Woods

She struggled and tried to push Owen away. Her skin felt hot and crawling. He was a heavy shadow, a cruel presence. He told her it was fine. He said it would be over soon. Lauren wasn’t sure what that meant, not exactly, but somehow in those words she found the deepest lake of darkest comfort and she stopped struggling, instead choosing to sink into the waters of his words.

—

Threea.m.

The flashlight beam cut a swath through the woods. Hamish held the light. Nick followed behind, his Zippo in hand, its flame starting to gutter.

“It has to be a prank,” Nick said. That was his take on it, and over the last few hours, he assured everyone,assured them 120 percent,thatMatty was cleverer than all of them and that somehow he’d rigged a staircase to appear and disappear, and he went with it. Never mind that Matty had never shown any aptitude for magic. But he was a prankster sometimes, and so Nick was sold on this. He said, “You’ll see. Morning comes, that clever prick will pop out of a tree stump like a Keebler elf, and we will shit our pants and we’ll laugh and cry and punch that fucker in the shoulder for what he put us through.” Hamish said he wasn’t so sure. Nick told him he was a naïve fucking idiot. “You’ll all see.”

—

Five-thirtya.m.

The sun was just starting to burn the edge of the paper of the universe. In the growing light of day, the four of them stood in the spot in the woods where Matty Shiffman had climbed a mysterious staircase and jumped off into nothing.

“You can come out now!” Nick screamed into the woods. His voice was hoarse. All their voices were rough from yelling for Matty all night long, their vocal cords rubbed raw by the belt sander of fear and desperation.

Nick and Hamish did most of the searching.

Owen stayed with Lauren, who was coming down off her trip and now sat in the leaves, her cheeks and forehead streaked with dirt, staring at the space where once a staircase stood.

In the slanted morning light, the intersection of reality and unreality was dizzying. The truth of their situation felt more and more like a dream, as if Matty had never existed at all.

“We have to tell someone,” Owen said.

“Tell them what, exactly?” Nick asked. “We found a magical staircase and our friend went up it and fucked off to Fairyland. I’m sure he’ll be back in school on Monday, don’t sweat it?”

“No one’s going to believe us,” Lauren said in a voice so quiet and so ragged, it sounded like a smoker’s whisper. “I don’t even believe us.”

Hamish kicked a rock and started sobbing.

Owen got up and put his arm around him, had him sit down next to Lauren. It just made Hamish weep all the more. They all watched it and waited for the storm to pass before they spoke again.

Nick said, “We’re going to need a plan.”

“Why?” Owen asked.

“Jesus, Zuikas. Because—because Matty is missing. He’s now a missing person, like, in a crime. Who do you think they’re going to blame for that?”

At that, Hamish’s head lifted off his chest, a look of hope brightening his face. “What if he’s back home? Like, what if he just went home? We’re up here in the woods and—what if he’s at his house?”

“I mean, I guess he could be,” Owen said.

Lauren shook her head. “He’s not. He’s gone. Just gone.”

“She’s right,” Nick said. “Matty is gone. Okay? Let’s say he is back home, then that’s great, then we don’t say shit and we just kick his ass for fucking with us. But if he’s not there—and we don’t have a story? Then they’re going to say we murdered him. We’re going to be in jail. Even if they never find him or find a body, then—”

“What if he fell off the cliff?” Owen asked, suddenly.

“That’s the story you want to go with?”

“No, I mean—last night. Laur almost fell, what if he…”

Looks of horror crossed their faces. The thought that Matty somehow stumbled away into the woods and off the edge of the cliff—

That, then, was the next round of searching. Now in the light of day. Walking the perimeter of Highchair Rocks. Looking down over the edges for some sign of him. Some part of all of them thought they’d find him down there, a broken body, bent every which way atop the boulders. It took hours.

But still no Matty.

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