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23

Ascent, Descent, and Memory

This is what Lauren would remember about that night:

She was going to do it. She was going to go up the staircase with Matty, and whether this was to join him or spite him, she didn’t yet know. No matter what, she was better than him, and like the song sang, Anything you can do I can do better .

But then, the staircase loomed large in her vision, and also in her mind, as if it had gone beyond the real and had entered her skull—like a tumor pulsing there in the meat of her mind. It was tall and black and made of shining bones, bones of copper and bronze, bones of polished wood. She didn’t know where her friends were. ( They’re here, a small voice told her, a voice she could not trust.) All she could care about was the stairs, and as she watched them, they seemed to grow before her, extending both up and out and toward her like an unfurling tongue slick with eager spit, the air stinking of bad breath and rancid oranges—the stairs went up, not a stairway to Heaven but somehow up and into Hell, as if they were beneath that demonic kingdom, digging their way into its belly like a sharp stone, and here she knew, she knew this was just a bad trip, none of this was real, and this was like the first time she’d dropped acid, when she’d been happily watching the fleur-de-lis of old wallpaper bloom like living flowers, meanwhile chewing her thumbnail and the skin around it, and suddenly she realized, I’ve gone too far, I’ve bitten the nail off, the whole tip of the thumb, my thumb is gone, and I am chewing it, eating it, I’ve become Owen —but the guy who sold her the acid, he said, You start to have a bad trip, all you gotta do is remember one thing: “I’m on drugs.” And so she’d written it on an index card then, and looked at it, and that’s what it said in big capital letters, “YOU ARE ON DRUGS, DUMBASS,” and she looked at her thumb and it was fine, all there, not even a spot of blood. And now, seeing the staircase loom larger and meaner and darker, she repeated that to herself in a small whisper: “You’re on drugs, you’re on drugs, you’re on fucking drugs, you’re in drugs, you are drugs”—shit, things were unspooling, and now something else was here with them. Hell made manifest. Hell as a structure. Hell with corners and walls, Hell with hands, Hell with wallpaper and doorways and shuttered windows, the latticework of that demonic architecture constructing itself piece by piece, like invisible hands making, fuck, what were those old toys, those old fucking toys her mom had in the garage— Tinkertoys, right, right, Lucifer’s own Tinkertoys, constructing themselves in front of her. You’re on drugs, drugs, you’re on acid, you dropped acid, you dropped, dropped, dropping —

And then Matty was at the top, and he was happy, and Owen was asking him not to go, not to jump, and Nick and Hamish were just fucking around, barely watching any of it, and she saw the black tunnel open up at the top of the steps, a hole in everything, a hole in the universe, and she tried screaming the words, Do none of you see this? but it came out small, the squeaked chatter of a panicked vole, “ do-none-of-you-see-this, ” spit on her lips, orange oil in the air, smoke from somewhere—and she cried out to Matty but it was late, too late, too too late—

—

This is what Owen would remember:

When he walked up out of the woods, toward the staircase, he followed Lauren. He tried talking to her as they went, but she just laughed like she’d heard a joke from someone who wasn’t there, and then she traipsed on ahead. When they got there, to the stairs, Matty was already on the second step. Doing a kind of Gene Kelly Singin’ in the Rain bit, la-dee-dah, dancing up one step at a time. Asking, “Who’s gonna do it? Who’s coming with me? Hamish? Nick?” But the two of them were monkeying around, not paying attention. And Lauren—she was suddenly goggling at the staircase, her jaw slackened, and Owen thought, She’s on drugs, shit . She loved dropping acid when she could get it. It hit him then: Maybe that’s what she and Matty were fighting about?

It was then that Matty turned to Owen—

“Owen. Buddy. C’mon. Let’s climb the creepy stairs.”

Beneath Matty’s feet, the floorboards groaned like a child in pain.

Owen’s mind raced. Everyone thinks I’m a coward. I am a coward.I’m always scared about everything. They’re just steps. Just a staircase. Creepy, sure, but that’s all in my head. I can do this .

Matty didn’t even need to say I dare you .

Owen remembered stepping up there onto the first step.

How cold the banister felt under his hand.

How the wooden step seemed to sag at first—and then rebound, as if it was lifting him up, encouraging him to climb, climb, climb .

The air around him seemed to go still.

Matty kept climbing.

Owen took a few more steps.

The banister, colder. The stairs, almost with a cradle’s rock now, trying to urge him forward and upward.

Lauren, behind him, mumbling something. Babbling.

Hamish and Nick, still on the ground, grabbing each other’s necks, sack-tapping each other, howling with laughter and fake outrage.

Matty, up there, reversing his way up the steps, looking backward at Owen, grinning the way only Matty did: a big toothy smile, happy because his life was excellent, happy because he was good at nearly everything he did, happy because his future was presented to him like a delicious buffet of food with all the best cuts of meat and tastiest treats—and as he waved Owen up, as he stepped toward the topmost step of the staircase, Owen thought bitterly, cruelly, You may be smiling, dude, you may have it all, but I don’t think you have Lauren . Matty must’ve hurt her, rejected her, that’s what Owen told himself. And for a moment, he felt superior. He felt supreme. It felt right and righteous to be angry toward Matty. Must be nice to be you, you prick , he thought coldly.

Even as Matty said to him: “See, I knew you could do it, Owen.”

And that’s when the world opened up behind Matty.

Owen smelled a sharp exhalation of must and mold, mingled with the tang of citrus oil, like the stuff his mother used to clean their dinner table. And beneath it all, the smell of rot. He was sure he saw something there—a shuddering space, a hallway, a room, something. A contained space. Flickering light like from a lamp with a bad plug. And then Matty turned to jump and—

In that one moment, Owen knew he should tell him not to jump. Matty did not see what was there, but Owen did—and he knew he should scream and shout and try his very hardest to get Matty not to jump—

But he couldn’t get the words out.

They stuck in his throat.

(Maybe because he wanted them to.)

And then, Matty jumped—

There was a feeling like a silent thunderclap. Something that reverberated without sound, that made Owen’s eyes water and his knees go weak.

Matty went through that strange open space, into the room beyond, the room that could not exist, and then—

He’s gone.

Those words came out of Owen then, quiet the first time, louder the next—“He’s gone!” And only then did the others start to see. There was laughter and incredulity. It was just a joke, they thought. Something insane. Hamish shook his head wondering how Matty pulled it off, walking around to the other side of the steps to see where Matty had landed, the beam of Hamish’s flashlight searching, searching. Lauren and Nick came up behind Owen, urging him to hurry up the stairs, to see where Matty went—yelling at him to go, go, go, move, move, where the fuck did Matty go, Owen what happened, Owen move for fuck’s sake, move—but Owen felt more scared than he’d ever felt in his life.

His feet were rooted to the spot. The staircase was inside his mind suddenly, growing steps, wooden slats appearing out of nowhere and unfolding like a deranged child’s toys, like the staircase was more than just this place in the woods—like it was a thought in his head he couldn’t pry loose, a terrible thought growing and growing, a cancer. It wanted him. It wanted them all. He didn’t want to be swallowed up by the staircase. By the darkness. By the rooms beyond. He started to crumple, started to weep. Knees weak. Melting. Nick tried shoving him. But he wouldn’t budge. At the top of the steps, the other room—the hallway, if it was that—was gone now. All that remained was the slashing spear of light from Hamish’s flashlight below. Owen finally cried out, turning around and running back down the stairs. He tumbled into the trees. Vomit came up out of him, a hot geyser of acid, the raw ruin of a whiskey burn searing him like fire. And in its wake—in the emptiness that followed swiftly after—he felt something far worse: guilt. The whiskey went out. The shame flooded in. I could’ve stopped him .

I wanted him to jump.

The world shuddered. Matty was gone. And soon, the staircase was gone, too. As if it, and Matty, had never existed in the first place.