Page 3 of The Staircase in the Woods

And with it, the news.

2

The Email

From:Nick Lobell

To:Owen Zuikas; Lauren Banks; Hamish Moore; Matty Shiffman

Subject:You are cordially invited to my funeral

So, I’m dying from pancreatic cancer! It’s not too bad yet, but they say it’s going to get real bad, real fast, and that this fucker is going to kill me quick as shit. As such, I’d like to see you jerks one more time before I waltz my way off this mortal coil. So consider this a formal invitation to my funeral, or pre-funeral, or still-making-memories-memorial-service, or whatever. I’d rather give you a chance to pretend I’m a good guy and you still like me while we’re all still alive than when the cremation furnace turns me to human kitty litter. It’ll be fun! I’m up in New Hampshire now. I bought you all plane tickets, which I attached as PDFs. Nonrefundable, in case you need that additional dose of guilt. It’s a long drive from Logan, so I’ll get a driver for you. I hope I get to see you all one last time. If not, I understand. Actually, fuck that—if I’m dying, I might as well go out honest: If you don’t come, fuck you. In fact?

I’m invoking the Covenant.

Be here or get fucked. Love you lots.

P.S. Hey, Nailbiter, I know you’re not going to want to get on a plane, but you gotta get on that plane, I don’t care if you chew your fingers to stumps.

P.P.S. Lauren, I’m not calling you “Lore,” and you can’t make me.

P.P.P.S. Hamish, you dick, bring weed. NH hasn’t legalized yet.

P.P.P.P.S Matty, miss you, brother.

—nick

3

Invocation

Finally, Lore must’ve lost her patience. His phone vibrated. He didn’t want to answer it. Didn’t want to talk to her. Every part of him itched with anxiety just seeing her name there on his phone.

But he knew Lore too well. She would call and call and call. The woman would fly here herself and rappel in through the window like SWAT. Lore was a Hunter-Killer drone on a kill streak. It was why she was successful at, well, everything.

“What the shit,” she said when he answered. “You planning on calling me back or what?”

“Yeah. I dunno. Sorry.” He didn’t want to get into why he didn’t want to talk to her. So instead he said, “I just keep reading it. I can’t stop reading it.”

“Owen gonna Owen. Always tonguing that broken tooth.”

“Don’t.”

A pause. “Sorry.” Another pause. “Hey, so we’re doing this, right?”

“Going? To his…”Funeral,he tried to say but couldn’t.

“Yeah. To fucking New Hampshire, of all the places.”

“I dunno, Lore. I dunno.”

Silence on the other end. “You do know. You gotta go. We all do. Nick is sick. We owe him this. Don’t we?”

Owen tried to imagine Nick being sick. Nick was like a human cigarette. All tar and nicotine. Was it possible for cancer to get cancer? But then his mind put Nick in a bed. Frail and crooked—the man-sized cigarette cooked down to the filter, the rest of him ash.Same way Owen’s own father went out. The way most people seemed to go out. In a hospital bed, like a wilting plant in a pot of dry, dead dirt. Owen tried to shake the image. He chewed a thumbnail.

It was clear Lore couldn’t abide the silence. So she filled it with:

“The Covenant, Owen. Nick invoked the Covenant.”

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