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The Only Way Through Is Out

Now.

This new staircase stood there. Waiting silently. Patiently. Nick stood near the first step, but not on it, his arms spread wide, a fire in his eyes. Vigor and regret and righteousness burning off him like embers flung from a campfire.

“The Covenant,” he said, with some finality.

Owen wiped vomit from his mouth with the back of his arm.

“No campsite,” Hamish said again. “Jesus, Nick. What the fuck.”

“No cancer, either, I bet,” Owen realized out loud.

Nick just shook his head. No apology in his eyes.

Hamish started pacing. Leaves and sticks snapping under his feet. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck . Nick, you fuck. You can’t—you shouldn’t —”

“I can and I did!” Nick screamed, his voice ragged. Quieter now, he said: “Matty called on us to come with him that night. He said it, he invoked our bond, the Covenant, in calling us to that staircase. And we didn’t go . We fucked around while our friend went up those steps and disappeared. And in the years after? Did we look for him? Did we stay together, work together, find him together ? As friends? As family? No. We didn’t. We didn’t do shit except fall apart and fuck off. But now here’s our chance. I found this staircase. And I got us all together, here, today.” He paused, looked to each of them, his stare deliberate, as if he was marking them. “The Covenant. The Covenant! The fucking Covenant .”

“Fuck,” Hamish said, face buried in his hands. “We don’t even know if that’s how we lost Matty. We don’t know that. We were young,Nick, we didn’t know shit, maybe we, we, we… misremembered it—”

“And it’s not—that’s not the same staircase,” Owen said. “The staircase from Highchair—that one’s gone. This one’s different, Nick. Different staircase, different location, how do you even know—”

But it was Lore who answered.

Lore, who hadn’t said anything up until this:

“Only one way to find out.”

No.

She hard-charged to the steps—

No!

Owen reached for her, but she was fast, too fast. Slipping away from him.

Already at the steps.

“Lore!”

One foot on—

Wham .

The whole staircase shook.

With movement from her? Or because it was eager, because it was hungry?

“ Lore! ”

Second step, third, fourth—

No, no, NO —

Owen called after her, yelling her name again and again.

“Fuck!” Hamish yelled.

Nick clapped and cheered, watching her intently—

She reached the top step—

And was gone.

Owen made a sound—a keening gasp of shock. “No, no, no. What the—no. Lore. Christ, Lore—” He started to walk to the side of the staircase, heading toward the back of it to see where she’d landed, because she fell, right? She jumped off the back and fell, that’s what obviously happened, and she might’ve been hurt. But Nick stopped him. Blocked him. “Nick, move —”

Nick grabbed Owen’s shoulders, gripping the collarbones so hard it was like he was using them as handlebars. “Clock’s ticking. Time’s almost up. I’m going. You don’t have to care about Matty, but now Lore’s gone, too. Can you live with that? I can’t. Make your choice, Zuikas. I choose the Covenant.”

And then Nick hopped onto the first step—

“ Nick, ” Hamish said, hands into fists, shaking the air like it was a screaming baby. But it was too late—up the steps he went, taking them two at a time. “Nick!”

Nick bellowed it one last time—

“Remember the Covenant!”

And then he jumped—

Off the step—

Into nothing—

And he, too, was gone.

Owen paced. “Jesus. Shit. Jesus. Hamish—”

But Hamish stood quietly at the base of the steps. Looking up, like a kid who’d lost his mother at a grocery store. Shattered. Searching. Despairing .

“Hamish, no—”

Hamish, still looking up, said quietly, maybe to Owen, maybe to the others, maybe to the staircase itself:

“We lost more than just Matty that day.”

And then he started to walk up the steps.

One step after the other. Slow steps, as if he wasn’t sure.

Owen begged him. “C’mon, we can talk about this, Hamish. Hamish .” Tears crawled down Owen’s cheeks as Hamish ascended the stairs.

Now at the top, Hamish didn’t jump so much as he took a deep breath and stepped forward. A big, wide step—a long stride to nowhere. The world swallowed him up. One moment, there was Hamish. And in the next? No one. As though he’d never even existed.

The air at the top of the staircase shimmered, like heat waves leaving a house in winter, the door open, the warmth stolen into the cold.

Make your choice, Zuikas.

Remember the Covenant .

The staircase shuddered. He felt the gentle tremble of the ground.

The top of the staircase pulsated.

I can’t do it.

I’m too scared.

They’re gone and I’m alone and—