The Staircase in the Woods

Owen is so anxious that he wants to bite off his fingertips. As Lore examines the books on the shelves, she realizes how much more purposeful and intentional Nick now seems. Nick opens a door to find a darkened bedroom, and a different door leads to a bathroom with a shattered mirror. Meanwhile, Lore finds the book she once wrote (The Crazy Bitch’s Guide to Game Design) sitting on the shelf, but this copy is filled with many of the sexist and violent things that the men in her industry said to her and about her. She realizes that this house functions very much like a game.

Lore gathers the group together and explains her revelation that the house is like a game; she notes that they came through the staircase, which served as a portal. Owen picks up her point, comparing the house to a game in which the player moves through a space, opening doors and finding objects; in such games, if the player makes a wrong turn, they die. Lore insists that the group must be intentional about their next move. They eat some protein bars that she has in her backpack and try to rest. She hopes that in time, the other rooms might shift and give them more information.

Owen and Hamish hear voices that remind them of when their respective parents used to fight. Owen reflects that someone’s words can hurt more than their fists and recalls visiting his father, who was dying of cancer, but before he can complete the thought, he “flinch[es] at the coming memory, and cut[s] it off at the knees” (182).

When Lore hears the voices, she thinks that other people must be present in the house. Nick sleeps through the disruption until the voices get louder, and Hamish eventually realizes that the voices belong to the couple who owned the house. Lore suggests that they keep moving, but Owen resists. He realizes that he has been playing it safe all his life. They use the bathroom, one at a time, leaving the door open.

Lore goes into the bathroom and sees shards of the broken mirror everywhere. She gets angry at herself for pushing Matty years ago and for failing to follow him up the stairs; she then gets angry at the others for following her and reflects that she should do this alone because they are holding her back.

Suddenly, Owen bursts in, yelling at her for closing the door, but she had never touched it. Lore realizes that Owen’s entrance has chased away the angry, intrusive thoughts, and she understands that the house wants to get each of them alone.

Lore insists that they need to build a strategy, but Nick just wants to keep moving. They turn on their phone flashlights. Lore asks if Nick has his Zippo, but he claims to have lost it. Lore opens the door to the bedroom, and the group smells the antiseptic sourness of a sick room. Lore and Hamish enter first, but Owen slams the door behind them when he recognizes the man in the bed as his father. Nick opens the door again, but now the space is a playroom containing a dead Christmas tree, and Lore and Hamish aren’t there.

Lore and Hamish see the sick man in the bed. Then, they hear the door click shut behind them. When Lore opens the door again, she finds a country kitchen. Once again, Lore thinks that she’s a step closer to going it alone, as always.

Owen rips his pinky nail with his teeth, making his finger bleed. He and Nick open the door to the Greige Room, but now it’s an attic filled with boxes. On a soiled mattress, a figure that looks like a body suddenly sits up, so Owen slams the door shut. He and Nick don’t know what to do now.

Lore and Hamish enter the kitchen, and when they reopen the door, the dying man’s bedroom has become a different bedroom. Lore wonders if this liminal space is a house, given that every room is a bedroom, bathroom, or kitchen. Lore identifies this kitchen as the infamous Billy Dink’s. (His mother poisoned him to make it appear as though he had several diseases, and she then reaped the world’s sympathy and money. When he was 13, Billy caught on to her ruse and stabbed her in the kitchen.) Now, Lore can see the bloodstains on the floor. Hamish opens cupboards, finding stale food and a message in Matty’s handwriting, which reads, “THE HEART IS WHERE THE HOME IS” (203).

In the earlier timeline, the four remaining friends sit in Nick’s basement, one week after Matty’s disappearance. Owen, Lauren, and Hamish talk about how poorly their parents are handling the matter. Nick says that his parents know he didn’t do anything wrong, but Nick talked to a lawyer because Doore will not stop investigating Matty’s disappearance. Nick declares that he is going to go “full-on Tank Thunderforge” (205), referencing his old Dungeons & Dragons character, a self-hating dwarf who often protected others. He has already made a statement, in which he claimed that he brought drugs and Matty took them. Because of this statement, Nick goes to juvenile detention for six months, but everyone in the town still blames the entire friend group.

In the present-day timeline, Nick wants to keep moving, but Owen wants to stay in one place. Owen suggests that the rooms move in a pattern, cycling through a finite number before restarting the cycle. Nick accuses Owen of always being too afraid to do anything. Nick says that he has been looking for supernatural staircases for years and emailing the group with sightings, trying to figure out what happened to Matty and convince the others to join him. Owen apologizes for not seeing matters from Nick’s perspective and asks how much Nick knows about the staircases in general. Nick “hesitates” before answering, but he says that a staircase tends to show up until someone goes missing, after which it disappears again—almost as if it leaves once it gets what it wants. Nick compares the staircase to a hunter setting a trap. Hearing this, Owen realizes that hate is an active thing, and he considers the idea that the house itself could be alive. Despite their fears, Owen and Nick try to sleep for a while.

Lore and Hamish find other messages of Matty’s inside the cabinets. He writes about feeling the house inside his head and declares that it wants to live inside him. Other messages state that Matty will become the house, as he wants to find “THE CENTER.” Lore suspects that the house forced Matty to experience an utter break from reality. She can already feel the house’s malevolence inside her, and Hamish feels it too.

In the earlier timeline, Lauren, Hamish, and Owen know that they are not welcome at Matty’s funeral, which takes place one year after he disappeared, but they attend anyway. When people are invited to speak, Lauren rises, but Matty’s mother screams at her and chases her away. Hamish and Owen follow her and find her sharing a cigarette with Nick, who has just returned from juvenile detention. He says that it is time to find Matty and that he heard about another staircase near Pittsburgh. They all refuse, wanting to move on with their lives. Nick screams at them, saying horrible things, and in this moment, the Covenant dies.

In the present, Owen dreams of a house with one window, and that window is an eye. The house tells him to come inside, and he wanders the rooms, hearing hundreds of voices. Jolting awake, he sees Nick standing over him, looking as though he is made of parts of a house: He has windows for eyes and teeth like a fence. Suddenly, Nick looks normal again, and Owen hopes that his impression was just the remnants of the dream lingering in his mind. As Nick speaks, Owen sees something flash in his eyes, which look like windows again. Owen starts to feel that he deserves to be there with Nick and that they are both “washed up,” like Nick said. The room on the other side of the door is still the attic, so Owen suggests that they step into that room, then return to this one, and then close the door; he believes that this sequence of actions will make the rooms shift. It works.

For Lore and Hamish, the rooms never repeat. They are horrified by the contents of each new space, and sleeping is a challenge because the noises get louder whenever they try to sleep. As time goes on, Hamish finds himself overwhelmed with feelings of guilt and worthlessness when he tries to rest. He is certain that this is hell. Hamish is a Christian because he is convinced that God gave him a second chance at life—with a wife and kids and his health. However, he has been serially unfaithful to his wife, and to make matters worse, his kids are selfish, and he doesn’t understand them. He loves them, but he has treated them badly and now feels wretched. Hamish has been sober for years, but when he and Lore find a room full of empty liquor bottles, he longs for death, thinking that death could be a way to escape this place. When he sees himself in the mirror, he beholds a distorted image that is decayed and bloated. He punches the mirror, and when Lore pulls him back, he rams her in the nose. He feels guilty, as though he deserves to be there, so he grabs a shard of mirror and moves it toward his throat.

Lore had not previously realized how much Hamish is struggling. When she sees him preparing to stab himself with the shard, she knees him in the crotch, and the fight leaves him. Later, she suggests that the house finds their bad thoughts and amplifies them. Lore realizes that she shouldn’t push Hamish too hard, even though the house is goading her to break him. Hamish admits that he once died of an overdose, but the hospital revived him. It has occurred to him that he is still dead and was never revived; if so, he reasons that this must be his afterlife. Lore remembers Matty’s written message not to let the house win. She thinks that maybe they have been playing this unknowable game by the house’s rules, so she decides that they should start breaking things, reasoning that if the house hates them, they should hate it back.

Owen and Nick cycle through various rooms but soon grow fatigued. Owen chews his nails in secret. Exhausted, they bicker with each other. Nick accuses Owen of being jealous of Matty, and Owen blames Nick for trapping them there. When Owen wants to punch Nick, he suddenly realizes how much the house is interfering with their thoughts and emotions. He tells Nick that he loves him, and Nick is stunned. Owen decides to cycle the room behind the door again, and when he opens it, the sight that meets his eyes astonishes him.

It is Marshie’s room. Owen is thrilled to learn that the house is finite because that means it might be possible to find Hamish and Lore again. Owen wants to try an experiment in this room.