Page 108 of The Staircase in the Woods

Everything hurt, and he was alone.

Hasty, probably incomplete damage report: Owen knew his lip was split. It felt fat and numb for the most part, like a microwaved slug. But in the middle of it he could feel the cleft, the crusted blood, and it hurt like battery acid. He had all his teeth. His jaw ached. He couldn’t breathe through his nose—it felt like his nostrils were stuffed up with cotton, which meant they were probably stoppered up with plugs of blood instead. His one eye felt swollen and he could neither open nor close it and wasn’t really sure which was which anyway because it was dark in here. Totally dark now, and as he stood, he realized that Nick must’ve broken the bulb. Glass crunched like little bones. Owen wanted to cry but didn’t really have it in him. Among the shards, he found no lighter. Nick must’ve taken that, too. Shit.

—

He ate. Idly and without joy. He brushed aside cockroaches and found some of the cereal, so that’s where he started. More of the Cap’n Crunch. No crunch berries, just the shitty yellow mouth-scouring bricks of stale sweetness.

Slowly he pulled himself up and found some other food.

Some of it, much of it, filled with more roaches. Where had they come from? Were they another trick of the house?

He ate potato chips. Cheese puffs. Wheat bread. Peanut butter. None of it good. All of it well past its time—none of it tasted moldy, but it didn’t matter. He found plastic bottles of water, too, and drank a bunch of those. His stomach hurt. But not as bad as his face and head, so whatever.

Anger laced through him, cinching his heart tighter and tighter.

He wasn’t ready to think about it. Not all the way, not yet. All he knew was that Nick had fucked them all over. And Owen wanted to kill him.

It felt eerily clarifying. Like his brain wasn’t on an anxiety loop. He didn’t feel that crushing tightness in his chest, didn’t feel the need to chew his fingers down to the bone. He just wanted to find Nick and beat him to death.

Half dizzy, he opened the door and cycled rooms till he got to a bathroom.

—

Big bathroom. Opulent and gaudy. Walk-in glass shower and lots of gold, fake gold, whatever. In the corner sat a jetted tub, and an infant floated dead there, face down in soapy water, bloated like a wet loaf of bread. Skin gray like a plastic bag from a grocery store.

It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real,Owen thought, but again, something there nagged at him,needledat him, something pulling on the fabric of his brain like a dog pulling the stuffing from a dog toy.

Because itwasreal, wasn’t it?

These things in these rooms, they happened.

The dead baby in this room was not a dead baby now, but it was,once—someone, somewhere, killed their infant in this room, or got high in an adjacent room while their kid drowned, or had their babysitter kill the kid while they were out running errands, or, or, or.

It was true, once. These rooms were real to someone.

Just because it was a show didn’t mean it wasfiction.

This was not a game. It was a true crime documentary. These were more than just ghosts—they were memories. Rooms of tragedy and terror built into this living house. Stolen and conjured anew for whatever dark purpose it served.

Just like how his father was dead, but he saw his father.

The house stole that room from him, and built it here.

They were all wandering through the ghosts of bad houses, weren’t they? Through the rooms papered with awful memories, carpeted by tears and by blood.

All of it pushed on him, pushing at the center of his forehead first like a pressing thumb, then like a power drill. Vibrating his skull, opening up a tender, red-rimmed hole. Let me in. Let all the awfulness in, Nailbiter.

Home was supposed to be a place of safety and comfort. But it wasn’t for him. Leaving school every day made his guts tighten, his legs cramp as if they didn’t want to carry him home. Owen knew the sound of his father’s Chevy Blazer the way a faithful dog did—it lived in him, that sound, and whenever he heard it in the driveway, he always ran to his room and locked the door. Not because his father would come in and beat him, no. But he’d find Owen eventually. He’d berate him. Make him feel small and worthless.Because you were small and worthless,he thought.Are small and worthless even still.Was that his own thought? Or an intrusion by the house? Or worst of all, was it his father’s thought? Played from a speaker mounted on the inside of his own skull?

It doesn’t matter.

He tried putting it out of mind.

Still woozy, he washed his face.Might have a concussion,he thought. His mouth tasted like blood and cheese puffs.

Nick had come here. Knew what this place was. And led them all to it. He was poisoned by it and wanted to poison them in turn.

I hate him. I hate him. I hate him.

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