Page 89 of The Staircase in the Woods

Lore. It was Lore.

She staggered back, her hands already going to her face. Blood refusing to be dammed by her palm and fingers—sliding through her digits, dropping off the heels of each hand. Lore coughed and said, “Fuck, dude,” except it came out,Buck, dude,instead. She pulled her hands away to look at them. Blood pooled in the cups of her palms, spilling over. And it kept pouring from her nose, which was already swelling up like a child’s balloon.

“Fuck,” Hamish said. “Fuck. Lore. Fuck. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He had hurt her.

He had hurt a friend.

He thought back to his wife, his kids. Now to Lore. The way he had talked to her in the car. The way he’d just busted her nose.

You stupid stupid piece of fucking shit.

You deserve this place.

You deserve pain.

He reached down and picked up a shard of mirror. For a moment, he saw himself in it once more. That dead, swollen face of his leering back at him. That grinning mug. So satisfied with itself.

He had to make it all go away.

Hamish turned the blade toward himself—

—toward his throat—

Andstabbed.

50

Intervention

Lore wasn’t ready.

Like, okay, sheknewHamish wasn’t doing great. His mental state had begun to dissolve: a sandcastle under assault by the steady drumbeat of the sea. Except in this case, the sea was a nightmare tide, corrosive and foul. Whatever this place was, it was clear that it was marked indelibly by tragedy, and though it looked like a house, it was as tractless and wide as any wilderness.

But we’re alive,she told herself. They had running water in some rooms. Food in others. Beds. Though there seemed to be something—what, ghosts? Illusions? Glitches in the Matrix?—afoot, they hadn’t been harmed by them. Though some seemed inclined to chase after them, others were content to remain in one place, screaming or bleeding or sobbing. (In one bedroom, they found a man simply beating his head into the wall. Again and again. Over and over.Whumpth. Whumpth. Whumpth.By the time they arrived, his face was already swollen and burst like a ripe fruit. Strings of flesh and blood hung between his cratered visage and the jungle wallpaper, like a cheese pull from pizza, sticky with marinara. And he kept doing it. Mumbling muffled words from somewhere through the meat of his ruined mouth. Lore found it horrifying but also…coldly, weirdly fascinating. She could’ve stared at him longer if Hamish hadn’t hurried her out of the room.)

Hamish always wanted to keep moving. Like something was chasing him—something other than the entities in these rooms.

In every room she’d see him twitch and flick his gaze around. Staring sometimes for long moments into mirrors or into a glass-top coffee table or into the dead screen of an old TV. He looked haunted by more than just ghosts. And her response to that was,Yeah, well, who isn’t?It wasn’t like Lore wasn’t seeing things either. She heard Matty whispering underneath doors. She heard, nonsensically, video game sounds—from her own personal bank of audio files, the ones she’d been collecting to use in her new game, the game she hadn’t even started yet. And sometimes just passing through a room, she blinked and behind her eyes, she saw a snapshot of something horrible that had happened in that place. Not something thatmight’vehappened. Something thathadhappened. She couldfeelit. Sheknewit. Intimately. Intrinsically.

Suicides and murders and abuse. But other, smaller, stranger things, too: Like in one absolute mess of a room, Lore saw in her mind’s eye a hoarder trapped underneath a landslide of their own hoard, growing weaker and weaker, unable to even reach her pets to feed them—the dogs and cats wailed and howled and yowled. Until they didn’t anymore. And the woman died there, like that, underneath the crush. Heart attack. In another room, a child in his pajamas found both of his parents dead—not from anything sinister, not from a murder-suicide, not from some serial killer, but just because one morning, the mother touched the faucet, a faucet which had been accidentally electrified due to some bad plumbing wiring mojo, and as she was being electrocuted, the father tried to pull her away, but was caught by the same current. Both died. A sad, stupid thing. A child, orphaned from a freak accident. Left alone, forever. (Like me,she thought, idly.You’re alone and you should be alone and you need to be alone.)

And Lore had no idea if Hamish was seeing any of this or not. She told herself it didn’t matter. Because she didn’t need him. And if that was true, then the reverse was true as well. He didn’t need her. Let him go through his own shit, she decided. Let him process it how he needed to process it. He had his God, he had his beautiful family and his sobriety and his smug fucking attitude.Good luck, dude.

But all that time, she realized, she had left him alone.

And he was flailing.

And a little part of her knew:You’re flailing, too, girl.

—

It happened so fast.

His elbow in her nose. Pop. Him with the mirror glass. Plunging toward his own throat.

Lore rushed him. Caught his wrist. He was stronger than her, easily. She had slowed his attempt, but not stopped it. Three inches to an open windpipe. Two inches.One.

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