Page 113 of The Staircase in the Woods

The others had their pain, too, but did you see it, did you help it, no no no, you didn’t, but now the staircase is here, the house is here.

Neverborn

Ghost boy

Parasite

Nailbiter.

—

Were these his thoughts?

Were they his father’s words? Had they buried themselves in his dirt so long ago that the plants that grew there felt like they were part of his garden instead of invasive root and choking vine?

Were they the thoughts of the house? Pushing into his soft stupid skull like fingers breaking apart warm bread?

Did it matter, if all the thoughts were right on the money?

—

The house hated him, he told himself. When the thoughts looped, he tried to put that thought in between them—

Neverborn

The house hates you

You missed Nick’s pain

The house hates you

You’re a parasite

The house hates you

Like a call and response inside his own mind, the spiraling thoughts like a buzzsaw, chewing into his sanity. Even as he stumbled through the house, back through rooms he remembered and more he did not, hefeltits attentiveness to him. The house. It watched him. It saw him. Itknewhim. And like his own father, it hated him for reasons that, he realized, had nothing to do with him.

He was present, and so he was hated. He was Owen, and so he was hated. He washuman,and so he was hated.

—

Every room, every wall, every floor, and every lamp—every water stain, every bloodstain, every shadow sliding through the wallpaper, every cabinet, every corner, every dead girl and drowned infant and hanged man, every tormenter and abuser and killer, every cat and parrot and pup, every cry in the dark, every face in the mirror, all of it part of the same pulsing throbbingraginghate. Tendrils and pseudopods of the greater beast: the endless house with its nightmare rooms.

It was angry, but that anger had purpose. It had direction.

It wanted something.

It wanted Owen.

—

It didn’t just want him. Itneededhim. He didn’t know why this was the case, but it was—he could feel its urgency. A new thought interjected itself into the loop:You can still make something of yourself yet,the voice, maybe his own voice, said.You can still do good work, Owen. If you’re strong. If you are brave. And most of all, if you are willing.

He passed by a hallway mirror. The wallpaper all around it swam and crawled. Ants from flowers. Spiders along vines. In the mirror, he could see the ghost of that wallpaper on his cheeks. He could see the glass in his eyes—the pupils crossed with windowpanes. His lips were dry stucco. His teeth were the columns of an old iron radiator, painted bone white.

The house wanted to fill him up.

His voice—or the house’s voice—told him:

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