Page 83 of The Staircase in the Woods

A woman sat in the center of the floor, sobbing. And with each hitching sob Owen felt himself sliding backward and forward in time—she and her husband, both young, both ruddy-cheeked and with chestnut hair, almost looking as though they could be brother and sister, and they were playing in this room with a little girl, maybe two years old. Mutate, shift, warp—now they were building those big chunky LEGOs with her, the ones for kids, the DUPLO blocks. The floor fell out and Owen landed in the playroom again, and they were there putting up the Christmas tree and popping ornaments onit, and the child looked a little older now, maybe three years old, and in her hand was the blue doggy plushie, and she coughed, one good cough with blood in it, and it wet the floor, and then—somewhere behind it all, the crying rose again, and there came the sound of medical machines, a ventilator hissing breath, a heart monitor beeping, then all of them in alarm, a cacophony of sound. A single tone. A flatline sound. The crying rose, rose, and the tears came pouring out of the woman’s eyes and then her nose and then her mouth, streaming forward, filling up the room, coming now not just from her but purging from outside the room, coming in—from around the light fixture, through the socket, out from the vents, tears and snot and spit and flecks of lung blood from a dying child, and Owen felt it all rising around him. Rising to his chest. Pushing toward his mouth. He could barely breathe, and then he plunged underneath it. Holding his breath for—how long? Not long at all. He couldn’t do it. The woman’s tears were drowning him. Trapping him at a crushing depth underneath. And as the darkness stained the edges of his vision—

The woman, the mother of a now dead child, swam toward him, her mouth open just enough so that he could see the pills on her tongue, gummy with spit—she closed her eyes, closed her mouth—

Gulp—

Thengasp—

Owen gasped awake in the chair, his body thrashing once in a hypnic jerk.

“Jesus,” he said, coughing as if his lungs were still full of floodwater (tears, spit, snot, blood). He wiped at his mouth. All dry.

And there stood Nick. Right over him. Eyes like windows. Teeth like the flat bright boards of a freshly painted picket fence. Skin like popcorn ceiling.

“Rough sleep, huh,” Nick said, and once more he looked…normal. Eyes, skin, teeth.Just the dream lingering,Owen thought. Or at least hoped.

“I…yes.”

“It’s really something, huh? You and me paired together. The twowashouts. Lore got huge, did everything she wanted. Hamish—well, fuck him, but at least he made something of himself. But us? Not so much.”

Owen grunted and sat up. Again he saw something flash in Nick’s eyes: eyes like window glass. And like something moving behind that glass.Your mind is playing tricks on you,Owen thought.No, thehouseis playing tricks.

He didn’t want to have this conversation with Nick. So instead he talked about his dream. About what he saw, there.

“I think this house is…alive.”

“It’s not alive, Owen. It’s just a house.”

“Sure, a house that’s an endless labyrinth, with shifting rooms.”

Nick scoffed. “Doesn’t mean it’salive. Just means it’s…” He shrugged.

“I think this room belonged to a family that lost their child.”

“I saw some ornaments on the tree, one had a picture of a kid in it. Cute kid. Sucks they’re dead.” Way he spoke, he sounded lost, almost. His voice flat, his tone a straight line.

“But the house wanted to show it to me. To us. That something happened in this room. Why?”

Nick shrugged. “Who the fuck knows. This place is a mystery, Nailbiter.”

“I saw my father’s bedroom. And—” He was about to say,I saw my knife, too. A few times, now. The Old Timer. The one I…but he couldn’t make his mouth form the words. “I just don’t get it. What’s the point of all this? This place? Trapping us here and showing us—what? Nightmare room after nightmare room? Some that have to do with us and a lot more that don’t?”Because you deserve it,Owen thought.Because you’re weak and pathetic and Nick is right, you’re both washed up and washed out and you deserve to be here, in this place, with him. He shook his head to try to shake free the bad thoughts. He so desperately wanted to chew his nails, but he knew Nick would say something cruel. So he shoved his hands in his pockets and endured the vibratingitchthat ran through him.

Chew, chew, chew.

Bite, bite, bite.

“I dunno what the fuck’s up with this place,” Nick said. “But one thing I do know? Your trick’s not working.”

Owen stood. His legs felt numb and wobbly. And still his chest burned from dreaming about drowning. He almost stepped on the blue dog toy—

And next to it was a small patch of darker carpet.

Smeared, as if someone had tried, and failed, to clean it.

Blood.

From that cough.

The sound of it looped in his head like sampled music.

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