Page 102 of The Staircase in the Woods

I still need time.

But here he was. Out of it. The last sand sliding through the glass.

The dead girl, her hands still on the knife, did not meet his eyes. It was like she was staring at a point near his eyes, but not in them, not at them. “Now you’re like me,” she said in a small, sad voice, the anger all gone, finally. In that way, they were like each other. Owen saw only now that he’d had anger in him—anger at himself, at Lore, at Matty, at the entire world—and it dissolved in that moment, like cotton candy on the tongue. He wondered if Marshie felt regret, too.

If she’d wanted to live in the moment she pulled the knife across her arms, then brought it to her throat and swiftly drew it left to right.

Slice, slice, slit.

Owen stepped back, and the knife slipped free from his heart. It made no sound as it did. It felt like nothing at all.

He looked down, waiting for the blood to soak his shirt.

It did no such thing.

Marshie continued to stare through him.

He pawed at his chest.

Still no blood.

The pain that he felt receded quickly. Like it was the ghost of pain, not the fresh pain of a new injury. A memory of it, referred from the past, given a moment to live in the present before fading anew. Owen gulped air and lifted his shirt—

There was no wound.

The knife hadn’t cut him at all.

Nick stood toward the door, frozen in place, staring in horror and, now, confusion.

“She’s not real,” Owen said, softly. Then, to Marshie: “You’re not real.”

She froze, then. Froze in place like a busted animatronic.

Owen laughed. “She’s not real. They’re not real. The—the people, they’re…”NPCs. Non-player characters. Just bits of program written into the story, unplayable, interactive only to a point.If we’re the player characters, they’re the non-players.Like fragments of artificial intelligence.

“No,” Nick said. “This is all real. It’sreal. You don’t get it—”

But the entire thing unspooled in Owen’s mind. Itwasn’treal. Seeing the knife that cut him on that screen, and later, at the bottom of the fish tank? All the dead people, the half-dead people, the ones who tried to chase them, or the ones who just sat there screaming? All the sounds behind the walls? It was all just part of a grand, horrid illusion. Like a haunted house in the most mundane sense: a place of trickery meant to scare the rubes who walked through it.

“It’s just fucking with us,” Owen said, spreading his arms wide, feeling more alive than he’d felt in—well, forever.This place hates you.That thought, it felt like a warning, a curse—but in a way, it was also the key. “This whole place is here just to break us down and fuck with us. I don’t know why. But I know I’m done with that.” He bellowed to the walls around him, to the ceiling, the floor, all the rooms aroundthem: “You hear that? I’mdonewith this. I know your tricks, and I’m not falling for it anymore.”

Then, a pause.

Admittedly, he hoped it would all just…what? Collapse? The house of cards falling around him, the trick exposed, the secret mechanics revealed? A door would magically appear? A staircase back out? A glowing exit sign? Or maybe applause from a secret audience, or text messages from the crowd watching this event being streamed live to the dark web? Lore and Hamish and Matty, emerging from that door, smiling warmly, telling him that he had indeed beaten the game?

None of that happened.

Okay. Fine. Okay. It would’ve been too easy anyway, right?

To Nick, he said: “We need to find the others and get out of here.”

“Zuikas. Owen. Listen to me—”

Marshie twitched.

Her eyes snapped to focus on Owen. It was the first time he felt she was trulyseeinghim—and his heart nearly stopped in its chest.

“Owen,” she said, her voice buzzing with not just her voice, but dozens of voices. Deep voices, high voices. An erratic, buzzing chorus. Humming together like summer cicadas.