Page 139 of The Staircase in the Woods

Or worse, the house had so taken him over, there was no Matty left. No memories of his friends to speak of.

“We ready for this?” Owen asked them.

“I’m not,” Hamish said. “What if…”

He didn’t finish the question. He didn’t have to. They all knew what the private investigator had told them. That there were women who had gone missing in the area. College girls, mostly. Six of them over the last ten years. None of their bodies ever found. Could it be Matty? Was it possible that he was carrying the pain of the house forward, hurting people on its whim? He didn’t have a family. He lived alone, kept to himself here. Had ample space to hide the women, living or dead. Not that anyone had ever even looked at him as a perpetrator of these crimes. He was a nobody around these parts.

Maybe, they told themselves, it wasn’t him. Maybe the pain he waged against the world was smaller, simpler; maybe he hurt himself. Maybe he just sat all day, stewing in hatred. Maybe he was fine. Maybe he had forgotten it all. Maybe Matty was too good for the house, and he had escaped it in his own way.

Hell, maybe the house had been lying to them all along.

They knew there was only one way to find out.

And then, the front door opened. A man stepped out. Lore knew him immediately. They all did. He was older, unquestionably. Gray in the hair at the sides of his temples. Maybe a little more weight in the front. But same build. Same posture. Same Matty, all these years later. But was it? Was it, really?

He came out, dumped a glass of water into a potted plant on the porch, then looked up, saw the car parked. Their car.

“It’s him,” Owen said, no uncertainty in his voice. No fear, either.

“He sees us,” Nick said, a kind of warning.

Hamish finally asked the question:

“What if the house is still in him?”

“Then we get it out of him,” Owen answered.

“And what if he’s…done things? Things we can’t fix?”

Lore said, “Then we deal with that however we have to.”

She didn’t tell them about the handgun she had in her bag.

Just in case.

Just in case.

She knew it was possible they’d find the house still in his eyes. They might see those rotten slats of siding. Irises like black windows with crying faces behind them. Brass knobs turning, ready to open into the maze of rooms his mind had become. Rooms upon rooms upon rooms of pain, filling up and spilling out. Maybe he was a real fixer-upper. Maybe they could save him. But maybe the only thing they could do was burn it all down. Sometimes that’s how it was.

“The Covenant,” she said, finally.

“The Covenant,” the others answered, in unison. Meaning it in all the ways it could be meant.

They got out of the car, unsure what they would find, or what was to come—but ready to stand together, just the same.