Page 129 of The Staircase in the Woods

The hammer clanged against a couple pipes.

Then:thump, thump, thump,a sound receding, its volume shrinking, until it was gone somewhere down in the dark.

Lore felt a shiver skitter over her, like dancing spider legs. The pit felt less like a pit now and more like a mouth. She eased back from the edge, in case the boards bent and dropped her in. “I—I don’t like it.” She was an early player ofMinecraftwhen it was in alpha, and then beta, and this reminded her of the earliest days of that, when you’d come upon a hole in the crust of that blocky world. You’d hear things down there: the hiss and moans ofMinecraft’s monstrous inhabitants. Creepers, zombies, spiders. You could easily fall to your death down in those places. Just like you could here.

To its credit, she heard no such monstrousness down below.

Instead, the pit seemedto breatheon her, a stale wind of strange smells: wet wood, rancid potpourri, bleach, lawn clippings. And a hint of coppery blood.

“It could be the way out,” Owen said.

“It could be a way to die,” she answered.

Nick stiffened. “It doesn’t want us to go down there. Can you feel that? I can feel it. Itresists. Wants us to be afraid of it.”

“It’s doing its job,” Hamish said, “because I am afraid of that hole. It’s a hole. Like, a fucking nowhere hole. There’s no argument here, it just goes into nothing. If we go down there,weare nothing.”

Owen looked around. “Maybe we can use a rope. Make a…a ladder.”

“Nobody here knows how to make a ladder,” Lore said.

“This isn’t actuallyMinecraft,Owen. Besides, whatever rope you find? It’s going to have to be a lot longer than any of us can even imagine. And then what? What if it’s still not enough? We just go down into the dark? Hanging there? Dangling?”Waiting for something to rush up out of nothing and close its jaws upon us?An insane thought. A monster gobbling them up.Maybe the house really doesn’t want us to go there.

“We don’t need a rope or a ladder,” Nick said, grunting as he stood up. He wobbled, but managed with Owen’s help to remain on his feet. “God, for a bunch of smart people you’re pretty fucking stupid.” Lore felt a weird spike of hope.He can still sound like Nick.That was a good sign, right? Nick went on to say: “The pipes? The wires? Ladder and rope, right there. Look—the pipes bend. Up and down, back and forth. And the wires go straight down. It’ll be like climbing the rope in gym class.”

“You know they don’t do that anymore?” Hamish asked.

“I always fell,” Owen said.

“I’m going,” Nick said.

Lore objected. “The fuck you are. We just got you back. We do this together or we don’t do it at all. The Covenant, buddy. The Covenant.”

To her, that was it. Game, set, match.

Nick did not seem to agree.

He leaned in, his face serious. His voice was hoarse when he said, “You want to talk the Covenant? The Covenant is about no bullshit.And the no-bullshit thing here is, we’re going to die or succumb to the house if we don’t go down there. It doesn’t want us to go down there. So that means we have to go down there. And if we die? Then we die together instead of up here, poisoned by this place so badly we bash one another’s heads in with—” He gestured all around him. “Cinder blocks, table lamps, or the same pipes we should’ve used to climb down into the dark.” He sniffed. “I’m going.”

“Nick—can we just talk about this—”

“Step aside.”

“I think he’s right,” Owen said.

Lore shot him a look. “What the fuck, Owen? You, of all people, want to do the stupidest, scariest thing?”

“Respect, Zuikas,” Nick said, offering him a fist to bump.

Owen bumped that fist, looking a little chuffed.

“I do,” he answered. “Nick gets it. This place will wear us down. I don’t want to wait for that. Maybe there’s a reason we didn’t think about digging, about the pipes and the wires. And even now you can feel the house outside these walls, whispering its hatred at us. What if—what if we go down there and it’s the way out? The exit? This way to the great egress and instead of taking it we just stand here, too afraid to go that direction?”

“Owen, we coulddie—”

“That’s true doing anything. I’d rather die trying to get out than die stuck.”

“Yeah, hell yeah,” Hamish said.