Page 131 of The Staircase in the Woods

“No fucking way,” Nick said.

“Nick.Please.”

The pipes hissed and gushed as water ran through them. Louder than usual this time, so loud it drowned out Nick’s response to her—though she could tell it was more of the same contrarian denial. He wanted to keep going, she wanted to turn around. At first, the water traveling through the pipes was cool—

Then it grew warmer.

No, no, no—

And warmer.

No!

And warmer still, until it was starting to gethot.

Her mind raced, a scattering of panic impulses. She started to yellout over the hissing pipes, “Okay! Okay, try to—tryto use your sleeves, you don’t want it to burn you and—”

Two words rose up from beneath her.

Nick’s two words.

“Fuck this,” he said.

Then he let go.

Lore screamed.

His body fell, feet pointed down, through the darkness. She looked up and still saw Owen and Hamish up there, both quickly changing hands on the pipes as the metal grew hotter and hotter—soon it’d be hot enough to blister their palms.

“I’m letting go,” Owen said.

“No, Owen, wait, hold on tome,don’t—”

Down beneath them, a voice calling up: “I’m okay,” Nick said. His voice echoing. “Let go. Just let go.”

Fear caromed through her. What if it was a trick? The house fucking with them some more? Mimicking Nick’s voice? Or worse, having taken him over once more, puppeting him to say those things?

But the pipes were getting hot, now.

Owen told her to trust, then he let go. Hamish, too.

Why am I the scared one—

What is happening—

She kept her palms free, the pipes in the crook of her arm, but the heat was burning through her clothes, and she could feel it radiating out, hot on her face, hot against her legs and her hip and—what else was there to do?

Lore cried out as she, too, fell.

She fell a hundred feet.

Or ten.

Or only one.

She had no sense of it. She only knew the bottom of the world fell out, and she plunged through darkness—

Until, soon after,wham,her feet landed—

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