Page 76 of The Staircase in the Woods

She could feel that now. That was the pressure pushing itself against her—trying to pushintoher. Making room for itself. Makingroomsfor itself.

Hamish, opening a cabinet, said, “Holy shit, food—”

And she mumbled in acknowledgment as she tried to process what was happening. This room was part of a house of tragedy. Tragedy that culminatedinthis room, right here in the kitchen of the Dink household. Billy Dink killed his mother here. And because justice was blind in the worst way, Dink went to prison for ten years. Was still there, according to the documentary she’d watched (and the podcast she’d listened to, and the series of TikToks she’d scrolled).

Was every room they’d been in like this?

The staircase brought them here.

Then Marshie’s Room: a girl who killed herself because she was depressed and because the boy she liked was mean to her.

The cake room: somebody’s birthday that had gone really fucking wrong, ending up with a severed thumb on the cake.

The greige room: a parent, a child, killed by the father.

The bedroom: a cancer man, dying there, wheezing.

And now, this place.

The kitchen where Billy Dink was kept sick.

The kitchen where he killed his mother.

Hamish pulled out some kind of snack bag. Like potato chips, with the requisite bag crinkle. A crinkle sound that suddenly stopped. He mumbled something about them being stale.

But then…

“…Lore?” Hamish asked.

“Yeah?” she asked, distracted.

“You need to see this.”

She looked up, saw Hamish standing in front of an open cabinet. There were snacks in there. Potato chips, a bag of Hershey’s Kisses, a little plastic bin full of sundae-making gear. Lore remembered something about this. The mother, Brenda, wouldn’t she eat all the junkfood in front of her son? And not share any of it except when she was using it to give him a little taste of poison?

What was so disturbing was how the mother filmed it all. Right there in the open. Not filming exactly what she was doing, no—she was filming life with Billy in order to get on the news and solicit more money, attention, love. But there were little signs in there, if you knew what to look and listen for. Like when she gave Billy a piece of chocolate and he said, “This tastes weird, Mama,” and she told him, “The pills make everything taste weird, sweet baby.” But it wasn’t the pills making it taste bad. It was the Windex. Or the drain cleaner. Or the dust of metal shavings she sometimes put in things.

But that’s not what Hamish was trying to show her.

He stood back and pulled the cabinet door wider.

Something had been etched on the inside of the door. Erratically, as if with a knife. Lore’s blood went cold as she read it.

It said:

THE HEART IS WHERE THE HOME IS.

It was Matty’s handwriting.

44

The Tale of Tank Thunderforge

1998.

A week after Matty’s disappearance.

They all sat around in Nick’s basement. Nobody was having much fun. Nick and Hamish were drinking Rolling Rock beer pilfered from the beer fridge in the garage upstairs. Nick’s father wasn’t home, but they all knew he wouldn’t mind. He was fucking awesome, Nick’s dad.

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