Page 132 of The Staircase in the Woods

Right on a fucking staircase.

77

The Third Staircase

Together, they stood at the top of a long,longset of stairs. Here, the ground of it was made of bent pipe and braided wire, but as it descended, they could see it become a staircase of wood, its risers lined with scuffed red carpet, the steps framed with an oiled dark balustrade on each side. It seemed to loom and sway.

It looked as if it went on forever.

Down, down through the void.

Behind them, it did not seem to go anywhere.

And Lore wondered if it was a trick. If they stepped off the back edge of the staircase, and into darkness, could they be free? Or would it kill them? Would it be like in a broken, buggy game, where to leave the map meant not being able to get back into it? Could they be trapped forever off the literal grid? That was somehow worse than just letting the house in, wasn’t it? Lore for so long had craved being alone, but that level of pure empty loneliness gave her a crushing sensation in her chest just thinking about it.

So, that meant the staircase.

That meantdescent.

She looked over at Nick. His eyes were dim, half lidded. Parts of him twitched in myoclonic spasms. He swayed. The corners of his lips looked like inlets of froth, even bile.We have to move quickly.

“We have to go down,” she said.

Hamish and Owen nodded, even as Nick stared at nothing. Because what other choice did they have but another leap into the void?

78

House in a House

The stairs changed as they went. From oiled wood to iron grate to old stone. Handrails of mahogany, cherry, brass. Some steps had leaves on them and other forest detritus, and when Owen saw that, he thought,We’re almost there, we’re almost home, this is it—

But then the stairs kept going, kept changing. It became a spiral staircase for a while, dizzying in its tightening coils down, down, down, the whole thing swaying and groaning, their heads spinning with vertigo.

He didn’t know how long they descended. The burning in his calves and thighs was almost loud enough to drown out the pain in his fingers and arms.

And then—

—

It wasn’t there, and then—it was.

Owen stepped forward, expecting another step in the staircase.

But instead, his foot landed dully in a patch of fresh grass. The smell of it—cut lawn, crushed onion grass—hit him fully, and again rose in him the sudden hope that they had done it, they had escaped, they had tricked the house and gotten away.

But reality soon refuted the certainty of their freedom.

Ahead of him waited a house. A small house. Siding the color of a cloudless summer sky. Like something out of the early 1950s—an overhanging carport to the side, a poured concrete walkway to the daffodil-yellow front door, high-silled bedroom windows, a partialsecond floor, which was more than you’d get with just a Cape Cod. An expanse of perfectly cut lawn was all around it, and aroundthata perimeter of white picket fence. And past the fence—

Well, was nothing.

No other houses, no other lawns, no streets, no daylight.

Only darkness, like what he’d just fallen through.

And above the house? A byzantine tangle of bent pipes and draped wires, all descending from the darkness and plunging into the newly shingled roof of this starter home. The wires sparked. The pipes hissed and steamed and shook.

Behind him, the others stepped forward. And behindthem,the staircase was gone. It had returned to the void from whence it came. In its place sat an asphalt driveway, and beyond that a shiny metal mailbox. Glinting like it was in the sun, even though all around was only the thickest pitch black.

---