Page 100 of The Staircase in the Woods

They were not only eyeholes—the light coming through them was meager because they were blocked by little slips of cardboard thumbtacked into the drywall. Lore shone the light over them, and pulled one aside—as it seemed it was meant to be—but even then, it remained blocked on the other side, too. She shone the phone light in there, and saw—

Pages. Bound pages. Like from a book.

In both of the eyeholes.

Lore poked at one of the books. It moved, sliding forward. She looked to Hamish and said, “Your fingers are big, can you push on one?”

“I’m not fat anymore.”

“Jesus, Ham, it wasn’t a fat joke—and god, you were never fat. You always looked good. Girls wanted to get with you, man.Guyswanted to get with you. You were comfortable and confident in your body, and that’s hot.”

She shone the light toward him.

His eyes gleamed. He was about to cry.

“You mean it?”

Sigh.

“Ham, I do mean it, and I want to give you this moment right now, I do, but therapy time has to be over, and we need to solve the mystery of this awful place. Can you please push past this and just poke the fucking book?”

“Yeah. Okay. I got this.”

But then, before poking the book, he hugged her.

Hard.

And admittedly, Lore was not one for uninvited touching. It generally squicked her the fuck out. She liked to be in control of those things. She liked the way things felt when she wanted to feel them, hated the way they felt every other time. Textures were hard for her. Clothing was weird. Sometimes the air felt like it was solid, enrobing her, making it hard for her to catch a breath. So a surprise hug was, for her, often very bad, and totally deserving of a knee to the crotch of whoever dared to foist such a thing upon her.

But right now, in this house, in this crawlspace, with this person—

It felt pretty all right.

She hugged him back.

The “pretty all right” feeling did not last, and she patted him on the back and said, “I need to be done with this, and you need to push the book.”

“Right.” Hamish let go (whew) and he reached forward and stabbed with a finger. The book popped free, and on the other side of the wall, she heard afwump. Hamish did the same thing with the other one—it took two finger pokes, and it sounded like the one book fell atop the other.Fwathump.

Light shined in.

Gray light. Beige light.

Greige light.

Lore pressed her eyes to the holes—

“It’s the Greige Room,” she said.

The living room with the white couch, the TV, the dead fish, the greige everything. From her angle, it meant she was staring out from the bookshelf—the eyeholes cut out behind it. She could almost feel the presence of the bloodied murder weapon on the shelf just past the wall.

“Really?” Hamish asked, and she let him look. His jaw fell open.“Whoa. Holy shit, this is the first time we’re seeing a room repeat. That’s a good thing, right?”

“It is. Means this place isn’t as boundless as I thought.”

Could mean there’s an exit.

She didn’t want to get ahead of herself there, though.