Page 99 of The Staircase in the Woods

“Then we bust our way out same as we got in.”

“Yeah. All right.”

She pressed on. Hamish close behind her. The walls of the crawlspace feeling like they were closing in. But here, Lore noted something: While it felt like the walls were closing in, that was just regular old claustrophobia. What shedidn’tfeel was that oppressive, crushing feeling. The one that felt like she was in a vice grip of pure hatred. Squeezing the air from her. Pushing the blood to her head. Draining the hope out of her heart.

We really are outside the game,she thought.

They closed in on the source of the light.

It was thin, weak light. As if it were blocked.

Closer, closer now.

The light revealed itself to be thin cuticles—little crescent moons of light. Two of them, one next to the other. Right at face height.

Lore went to turn on her phone flashlight, but Hamish figured it out before she did.

“They’re eyeholes,” he said.

56

Conversations with a Dead Girl

A bloody hand shot out from underneath the bed, grabbing a tuft of carpet. That handhauledthe girl’s body forward. Another hand shot out, this one holding the same knife as she held before: the thin, curved blade of the boning knife. The stainless steel dark with dried blood. As the girl began to emerge from the dark space, grinning broadly, Owen scuttled backward, barely managing to stand without falling over. He braced himself against the wall to keep himself upright, his hand planted in the midst of the gathered Spice Girls.

“Owen,” Nick hissed in warning.

But Owen stood his ground. Even though he was shaking so hard he thought his molecules might vibrate apart. But there existed a clarity to the moment; Owen felt sharp as that knife in the dead girl’s hand.

“Marshie,” he said, quiet at first, then again, more firmly: “Marshie.”

She rose before him, almost as though she was a bundle of rags and bones reconstituted into a girl. Her pale face regarded him carefully. A whisper of air hissed wetly from the vent in her throat.

“Graaaaady,” she said.

“I’m not Grady.”

“I lllll—” She choked, and tried again, the voice sounding so sad this time, like the peal of a funeral bell. “I lllloved you. And you were s-s-ssssso cruel.”

“Why did you have a photo of that knife on your computer?” It hit him then: Did she? Did she really have a photo of his old penknife?Or did his brain just make it up? Did thisplacejust make it up? Lore hadn’t seen it. Only he had. He raced to another question: “Tell me something about yourself. From when you were alive. Anything. What were your parents’ names? What was your favorite food, your favorite color, your—” He still had his hand on the wall, on the poster. “Your favorite Spice Girls song—”

“You were so mmmean to me. You cut me with your w-words. So I ccccccut myself to match.” Her voice was sad. Her words a lamentation—and it hurt him just to hear them. She held up both arms, showing him the deep slash down the inside of each. From wrist to elbow. The movement squeezed thin, brown fluid from the openings. It dribbled to the floor.

“That wasn’t me, Marsha.”

“You hurt me. I hurt me. Now—” Her voice turned angry. “I hurt you.”

“No—!”

She raised the knife—

—Owen cried out—

And buried the blade in his chest.

57

Jeepers Creepers, Where’d You Get Those Peepers