Page 18 of The Staircase in the Woods

They’d compartmentalized all of this for far, far too long.

It was time to open up and let the blood flow.

Owen was about ten, fifteen feet behind her. Trudging awkwardly through the brush. Struggling with his bag. She wanted to help him, but he didn’t want her help.

Ahead of her, Nick and Hamish walked together, side by side, talking. Nick was shaking his head, agitated. Hamish threw up his hands, frustrated or fed up, and then let Nick walk on ahead as he fell back.

“Hey, man,” Lore said to him. “You good?”

“Not now,” he snapped at her.Well, that’s not very Hamish of you,she thought, and then he headed toward Owen instead.

“Well, fuck you, too,” she said under her breath, and put some pep in her step to catch up to Nick.

A voice then whispered in her ear, crisp as someone snapping a twig—

“All alone again, Lauren?”

She gasped and whirled around.

Hamish and Owen were giving her a confused look.

“Did you hear that?” she asked them.

“Hear what?”

“I—”A voice. I heard a voice. I heardhisvoice. Matty.

“Lore?”

“I thought I heard a—an animal. Like a bear.” She shook her head. “It’s stupid. Never mind.” And again she hurried forward, now chased by the feeling of being watched, being judged, and—

Though she didn’t understand it, not yet—

Beingsummoned.

The voice, that question, it lingered in her ear like an endless echo. A dead voice, bouncing back and forth, back and forth, till it became a meaningless hiss.

11

Sour Times

As they walked deeper into the woods, the trees seemed to grow taller, the understory thicker. The air was cold and damp now—humid, like in a rainforest. There came with it an almost narcotic effect. Lulling. Hypnotizing. No longer pushing Owen down, it seemed instead to be drawing him deeper.

He couldn’t chew his fingernails, given how he was dragging his bag now with both hands. So instead he gnawed his lower lip. Nibbled a piece of skin off it. Tasted a hint of fresh blood and winced.

Next to him, Hamish hauled his own suitcase through the brush, branches and twigs crashing. He looked over at Owen and asked, “You pissed at me too, dude?”

“No,” Owen said. “We’re good, why?”

“Lore’s mad at me, obviously, and Nick is salty, too.”

“About what?”

“I dunno. That I guess I never really responded to any of his emails.” Hamish paused, looking around the woods. “You?”

“Respond to his emails? Sure, sometimes.” Nick sent emails around any time he had some new theory about Matty or about the staircase. He always wanted them to get together, even if just on a Zoom call or whatever, but Owen always told him no, he was busy.Even though I wasn’t busy,Owen thought.

“I should’ve, I guess. Fuck.” Hamish sighed. “You know, it’s just like, I guess I thought that chapter was closed. It happened. It was fucked. But we can’t go back and change things like that. But I figuredI could change myself, right? I improved myself, I worked hard on myself, and—and Nick is still Nick, still stuck back then, still living in the past…and god, now he’s dying. But I’m healthy now, you know? Real healthy. A good mindset. And I think we just need to move forward instead of always looking back—”

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