Page 101 of The Staircase in the Woods

After all, hope was what killed you.

Maybe Matty got out…

Maybe Matty died in here…

Maybe he’s been in here the whole time, watching us.

She backed away from the eyehole and looked around some more. There, a little farther down, the ground rose up a little into a pile of mess, and it took her a moment to realize what she was looking at: a filthy twin mattress crammed into the space, and heaped with a pile of blankets and clothes. Plus some more snack bags and soup cans. Like something from a homeless encampment.

“Lore, over here.”

Hamish gestured with his foot toward the wall at the bottom. The space he was gesturing toward was below the eyeholes. Lore knelt down and saw that someone had crudely cut through the drywall here, as if with a steak knife or some other totally inappropriate implement. She gently pressed on it. It moved.

“It’s a door. A hatch,” she said. “From the crawlspace into the Greige Room.”

Hamish was right. It was right underneath their noses the whole time. A way in and out of the crawlspace. And a way to watch them.

Suddenly, she hoped like hell it was Matty who had made those eyeholes and this door. Because otherwise, it meant others had come through here. Others who could still be here, even now. Watching them, like one of those freaky motels where the proprietor watched you through the walls.

Maybe it’s whoever built this place.

But even there, she flinched. Because this place didn’t feel built.

It felt…born.

But for what purpose? Was this some kind of deranged horror house panopticon? Were they players in this game? Or its designers? Were they victims, or architects? Or somehow, both?

Just then, her light went out.

She clicked it back on—but nope, nothing. Lore growled out a frustrated sound. “My phone’s fucked.Shit.”

“Lasted longer than I figured it would.”

“Yeah. All right. We can’t stay in here. It’s too dark.”

“Right. But—I don’t really wanna go back out there, dude.”

“It’ll be fine. And at least we have a way back in.” She pushed on the drywall cutout and found some resistance.The books,she realized. The eyeholes looked out through the shelf, which meant this door was concealed by the books, too. It’s why they couldn’t see it when they passed through the Greige Room. She winced and pushed harder, and all the books ahead of the makeshift “hatch” slid out and tumbled into a clumsy pile. The light of the Greige Room brightened the crawlspace. “Ready?” she asked Hamish.

He nodded.

Back into the house they went.

58

A Map, Drawn by a Knife

The boning knife slid effortlessly into Owen’s chest. The pain that bloomed there was numb and cold, as if she’d stuck him with an icicle. The blade through the rib. Into—what? His heart? His lungs? He swallowed hard. Gasped for air. Tasted blood. Heard Nick calling his name. But standing there. Just standing there. Watching.

And to think, this is what I wanted once,he thought, idly, madly, almost hilariously. All those times of him hiding in his closet or walking out into the woods across from his house, the Schrade Old Timer penknife in his hand, and he’d go out there and peel up the sleeves of his black tee, exposing a biceps. He’d suck in air, holding it tight, his heart thudding anxiously in his chest as he pressed the blade of the knife against his too-pale skin—his technique was always a quick tug, never slow, always fast. Making a thin slash, like a thorn scratch or a paper cut, but just abitdeeper every time. The skin of his arms showed older scars, like a crisscrossing of lace just under the skin. Whenever he cut, he thought,One day I’ll do the real thing, one day I’ll show them,and that last part was the thing, wasn’t it?I’ll show them.

But it wasn’t even them, not really. It was him. His dad.I’ll show him. He’ll see that I’m dead and he’ll feel bad for all the things he said about me. One day, Owen would stop cutting the biceps and he’d do the right thing the right way. Not across the wrist, ohhh no, that was the loser way. And Owen was smart. He knew he’d put the knife starting at the middle of the wrist and then pull it to the elbow. Like hewas opening a box.Vvvviiiiip. And the blood would pour. And the life would leave. And they (his father, okay, maybe Lore, too, maybe Matty, maybe anybody who wasn’t ever appreciative of him) would all regret the way they’d treated him. But he never did it. Never managed.Never had the courage,he knew. Because that was Owen. Too scared to get it done, to see it through. Always easier to fail, and even better not to ever try in the first place.

Here he was, finally having succeeded at the thing he’d failed to do every day—he put himself in the way of death, and death was happy to continue in its path, throwing him beneath the hooves of its horse, the wheels of its carriage. Like Emily Dickinson had written:Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me.Yet in this moment, it felt all wrong. A surge of something surprising arose in him:regret. Then, on its heels:despairthat he was going to die, and thedesireto undo it, to change it, tocontinue.

Owen didn’t merelynotwant to die.

Owen wanted to live.

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