Page 123 of The Staircase in the Woods

They all palpably stiffened.

“It’s still in my head. Thething.The monster. It’s…retreated. Like it went into my mental vents, or into some dark corner of the basement you never look at. But I feel it in there. Biding its time. Waiting for me to be alone out there again. The only way out is to let it in. And even if you don’t let it…it’ll get us all eventually. You can feel it, can’t you?”

Lore wondered, could they stay here? In this crawlspace? Forever?

A small, strange fantasy played out of them hiding here, just thefour of them—pillaging snacks and water, playing little games, mapping the crawlspaces for any who would come here after them. Maybe they could live here. The adventuring group, colonizing the dungeon in which they were trapped.

It was a lie, she knew. A comforting one.

But Nick was right. Eventually, it would get them in here. She did feel it—that ambienthatredof them, pulsing against the walls like the beat of a diseased heart.

Vwommm, vwommm, vwommm.

She sipped her coffee.

Felt the anxiety crawling through her like ants.

This isn’t you.

You’re better than this.

Focus, Lore. Fucking focus.

This is a game.

Not a real game, no. Not a simulation, not exactly. But it helped her to continue to think of it that way—to categorize, to compartmentalize.

(To control.)

But what kind of game?

All this time, she’d been thinking about it like it was purely a puzzle to solve. An adventure game that needed all the clues, needed you to make all the right choices for you to get to the end of the story.

But that wasn’t right.

It was PvE—player versus enemy. This was survival horror. This wasFinal Fucking Fantasy. It wasZelda, Skyrim, Bioshock.Somewhere here, the enemy lived. The final boss—the Ender Dragon, Sephiroth, Hades, Ganon. It guarded the portal home. They had to find it. They had to kill it. But where? Where was it?Whatwas it? She stood up suddenly, her coffee splashing over onto her knuckles.

“You know things,” she said to both Owen and Nick.

They looked to each other quizzically.

“Owen, you knew Matty was alive. Somehow, the house…it left that impression upon you. And that was just for the short time it wasin you. Butyou—” She pointed to Nick. “You were in there a lot longer. It’s still in there now, according to you. You must know something.”

“Lore, I don’t—”

“It won’t want you to know that you know it. But you do. Youmust. It’s got fingerprints all over your appliances, man. I need you to dig deep. Please, Nick. You’re right, we can’t stay here, and it’ll win eventually. Like Owen said, the house always fucking wins. Unless we figure out how to burn it all down.”

Hamish clapped Nick on the shoulder. “I believe in you, man.”

“Thanks,” Nick said, but he said it in a wry way, as if he wasn’t sure. He settled into himself, easing back, setting the coffee down. He took a deep breath and looked like he was trying to relax. He blinked—

And Lore nearly gasped when she saw it. His eyes: drywall marked with striations of black mold. Another blink: siding stained with ill-colored algae. A third blink, and his eyes became gleaming doorknobs, promising ingress—doorknobs so shiny she could see herself reflected back in them.

Nick stiffened suddenly, sucking in a sharp intake of breath—

And then he told them a story.

Interlude