Page 19 of The Staircase in the Woods

At that, a cold wind crawled through the trees. Even in the heat, it sent chills up Owen’s arms, his neck. Like ticks crawling.

Hamish kept on rambling. That familiar Hamish cadence, but now more anxious, more irritatingly self-assuring, as if he was trying to talk himself out of something—out of feeling bad, out of being Lore’s punching bag, out of being here at all. He used to be allCool, man, whatever,but now he was dragging around more than that one carry-on, wasn’t he?

Still, Owen tuned it out. Mumbled anuh-huhor ammmhere and there, nodding along, but all the while pushing on through the woods, his legs burning, his shoulder aching, wanting to chew his fingers down to the first knuckle.

—

Onward they went. The four of them trudged through the woods. A half hour, then forty-five minutes, then an hour. They were all mostly quiet now—Owen thought,We’re already tired of one another’s company,though he wasn’t sure that was it, not exactly. Owen was swatting away mosquitoes. He already had a couple good-sized bites on his neck. He was sweating. Sticky with spider web. An elbow, etched with thorn, a streak of blood smeared there when he wiped at it. But it was more than that, too—in the space between his heart and his stomach was a roiling, tightening bundle, like a knot of starving tapeworms looking for egress.

Close to that hour mark, Nick must’ve felt their agitation, and he called out: “We’re almost there, me hearties! Just imagine the cold beer!”

He kept on. Hamish just after.

Everything in him screamed to turn around.Go home, Owen. Even though for him, home was an alien concept. His apartment was abox, a cube, a place for function and not for comfort. And growing up, home was…

Well, it was no home at all. It was a place to escape from. That was all.

Sweat ran down his back, cold as ice. The hairs on his neck and arms all rose to standing like the living dead. His gorge rose as his guts flopped inside him like a dying fish. At first he thought,I’m getting sick,and that just sent a new ripple of panic through him—getting sick out here? In the woods? An hour from the highway? And if he was really,reallysick, like norovirus or, fucking hell, COVID, how would he even get back?I could die out here,he thought, almost absurdly.

But then it hit him—he’d felt this feeling before, andnotwhen he was sick with something. No, this was different. This was special.

And it was way, way worse.

He hadn’t felt this in over twenty years.

“Something’s wrong,” he said, his lips dry as Bible pages.

“I don’t feel good,” Hamish said quietly.

Owen’s hand let his bag go—a reflexive action, one he didn’t even think about—as he hurried to catch up to the others. “Lore,” he said, in a loud, hissed whisper. “Lore! Lore, I think—”

“Fuck,” Lore said. And he heard the urgency in her voice.

Ahead, she and Nick stared into a wider, more open space—what looked to be a clearing. Lit with bright, cold light.

He and Hamish headed toward them—

But even from here, Owen could see what Lore was seeing: the top of it, poking out of the trees, just a glimpse of an old railing, the final right angle of the last step, the dark wood, the crooked balusters—

Lore staggered forward, eyes fixed on a distant point.

Owen went with, his guts churning. Next to Nick now, the four of them stood in a line, gazing into a clearing where the sunlight seemed to be a spotlight, a great garish beam illuminating a single, horrible, impossible thing:

A staircase in the woods.

12

The Second Staircase

I see you,Lore thought. Horrified and entranced. Fearful, yes—

But something else, too. Hope. Mad, alien, deranged hope.

The staircase had no house around it: It stood alone, a beast of thirteen steps. Dark wood was its material; it stood tall and crooked. The baluster and handrail looked freshly oiled. The steps themselves were ragged at the edges and uneven, forming not right angles but rather off-angles, as if the stairs did not entirely fit together. Trees sometimes bent toward the sun, but here they seemed to be bending away from the staircase, as if in fear, trying not to be caught in its trap. Other greenery, too, refused to get near it—nothing grew at its margins, and though all around the forest was alive with ivy and bittersweet and honeysuckle, none of it dared to climb the staircase. The staircase ascended up, up, up, its steps leading to nothing but open air. But Lore knew that wasn’t really true, was it?

A wind swept through, swirling dead leaves and a shimmer of pollen up those steps. Or was it drawn there, by the staircase itself?

Lore felt herself drawn closer, even as she rooted her feet to the ground.

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