Page 128 of The Staircase in the Woods

She repeated the thing Matty had carved into that cabinet door: “The heart is where the home is. Not the reverse. Not ‘the home iswhere the heart is.’ Why would he write it that way? Because he knew something. We’re looking for the house. For thehome. The original one. And if you follow that literally—”

Hamish made a gasp face. “It’s an actual place. Here in the bigger house is…the original house. Somewhere at the heart of it.”

“At the center of the labyrinth,” Owen said.

By now, Nick’s eyes were half lidded. His breathing was shallow.

We fucked him up by making him get close to the house. Shit shit shit.

Only thing to do was to keep going. Keep talking.Keep figuring it out.

“We gotta find the center of the maze,” Hamish said.

“No,” Lore said. “Not exactly. Look at the pipes. The wires. They don’t go up into the ceiling. They all go—”

“Down,” both Hamish and Owen said at the same time.

“Right. And if you were to think of where your heart was, where would you think of it being? In relation to, say, your mind. Your head, your brain.”

Again, together: “Down.”

“Yeah. Down. Down deep in your chest. Protected by all this bone and meat. Fuck.” She looked down at the floor. “We busted through the walls and we came here. But…we never thought to fuckingdig.”

76

As Above, So Below

As Lore and Hamish took the lead ripping apart the floor, Nick sat there, shivering, sweating, as though he was retreating from himself further and further—like watching someone drift all the way out to sea. And Owen sat next to him, trying to ignore the pain throbbing through his fingers and his arms. The very pain that ensured he wouldn’t be of much value here, digging through the floor.

At one point, Nick seemed to jostle awake—even though his eyes had been open the whole time, unblinking, suddenly it was like, boom, he was there again. He looked to Owen and said, “Sorry I left you alone. And dragged you here in the first place. You’re all right, Zuikas.”

“Sorry we didn’t listen to you all those years.”

A weak shrug as Nick stared out through nothingness. “Not sure I’d’ve listened to me either. Fuck. What a mess.” His voice cracked, then, like a tree in a hard wind. “I’m scared, Owen. I don’t like this thing being in my head and—and I don’t think I’m going to make it—” At that, he gulped a hard sob. Owen pulled Nick close and let him put his head on Owen’s shoulder.

“We’re gonna get you out of here,” Owen promised him.

“Gotta get this thing outta my head first,” Nick said.

“We’re working on it. We got you.”

But Owen wasn’t so sure. Whispers of doubt crept in through the floorboards of his mind like creeping vines.You can’t do this. You’re too late. You can’t do this. You’re too late.Over and over again. Hegritted his teeth and winced, shutting them out as best as he could. But he could still hear them. Neverborn. Nailbiter.

—

An hour later, Lore and Hamish used all the tools they had at their disposal—a hammer, a brass lamp base, a loose cinder block, even the heels of their feet—to bash open a raggedy hole in the floor of the crawlspace.

Click.

Lore shone a flashlight down in the dark.

“It’s a fucking pit,” she said.

“A bottomless pit,” Owen added.

They could see the bending pipes and the drape of wires descending into the darkness. Eventually, they were swallowed by shadow.

“Welp,” Hamish said, taking the hammer and dropping it into the hole. He held a finger to his lips. Mouthed the word: “Listen.”

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