The Staircase in the Woods

Owen’s mind keeps returning to the idea of video games, and he assesses Marshie’s room carefully to see if anything is different from his last visit. Owen can’t remember how long it has been since they climbed the staircase, but he knows that they need to try different things in order to discover more information about this house. Feeling conflicted, he drops to his knees to look under the bed and finds Marshie.

In the crawlspace, Lore feels that she and Hamish are making progress. She can tell that the crawlspace should turn where the room does, but it keeps going straight; she compares the experience to “clipping” in a video game, as the crawlspace is clearly outside the designed area where players are meant to move. She notes that it is easier to be calm in the crawlspace than in the rooms. They find more snack garbage and a pair of New Balance shoes like the ones that Matty used to wear. Lore and Hamish wonder if Matty escaped; if he did, they wonder why he didn’t find them. They also discover a pair of eyeholes that someone cut into the drywall.

Marshie pulls herself out from under the bed, still holding the knife. She calls Owen “Grady” and says that she loved him. He asks about the picture of the Old Timer pocketknife. He tries to get her talking about something other than Grady, but she won’t. She shows him the damage that she did to herself, saying how he hurt her. Now, she says, she will hurt him. She stabs Owen.

The eyeholes are hidden behind a full bookshelf on the other side of the wall. Lore asks Hamish to poke the books out of the way, citing his larger fingers, but he says that he’s not “fat” anymore. Lore says that Hamish never was “fat” and that he was always attractive. He tears up and hugs her. Hamish pokes the books away, and they see the greige room again. In the crawlspace, they find a filthy mattress and more food garbage. Down low, Lore finds a door cut in the wall. Her phone battery suddenly dies, so she and Hamish go back into the house.

Owen thinks about how he used to cut himself and how he wanted to die, as well as the guilt that he imagined his father might feel if he were to die. Now, though, he doesn’t want to die. In this moment, all his anger at himself and everyone else suddenly dissolves. He realizes that he isn’t bleeding from Marshie’s cut; the knife has left no wound. He tells Marshie that she isn’t real, and she freezes “like a busted animatronic” (273). He realizes that the house itself isn’t real; it’s just an illusion designed to trick the people inside it. In this context, Marshie is like an NPC, a nonplayer character. She twitches back to life and focuses on Owen for the first time. He tells her again that she’s not real. In a voice that contains dozens of other voices, Marshie states that his father is real and is inside the house. Suddenly, she speaks in his father’s voice, saying that Owen’s mind is a house of pain and that she can add its rooms to her own. Marshie repeats his father’s final words to him before Owen did something that he won’t let himself remember.

Lore looks for her book on the shelves, but she cannot find it. She says that if the place wants to get inside her head, showing her a book of people who hate her is a good way to do it. Hamish confesses that the first bathroom they found is the one where he temporarily died when he overdosed on drugs. He recalls a room with a home gym, which they saw earlier, and he says that’s where he learned to hate his body and to punish himself.

He and Lore consider what they know about the house: that it hates them and that they “can tell [something] by the eyes” of the people they encounter there (279). They check the crawlspace, but it has not changed; they realize that the rooms change but the crawlspace does not. Continuing her gaming metaphor, Lore compares the changing rooms to pulling the lever on a slot machine. They decide to cycle through more rooms and see if they can find a phone charger. Lore realizes that Hamish always thought of himself as a “dumb, fat kid” (280), but he says that he didn’t see himself this way when he was with his friends.

Owen realizes that because he has seen through the house’s illusion, it is now talking in its real voice. Nick wants to find food. He and Owen cycle through the rooms until they find a walk-in pantry. Owen asks Nick about his strange behavior, but Nick doesn’t want to talk. They eat in silence, and Owen thinks about the blue suede bag that hung next to his father’s bed. Then, his foot kicks something, and he bends to pick up Nick’s Zippo lighter. He thinks that it must be another illusion, but then he sees Nick’s eyes. They each show a set of steps, and Owen realizes that Nick has been here before. Nick admits it, claiming, “The house always wins” (284). He explains that he knew what this place was; he says that he found Matty’s body, and now the house won’t let him go. His voice changes, becoming the same ominous chorus of voices that Owen heard when Marshie spoke. Nick says that he’s going to leave Owen alone now. Owen punches him, and Nick pummels Owen and then steps through the pantry door.

Owen wakes up, battered and bloody. He eats as much as he can, wanting to kill Nick. His mind feels clear, and he doesn’t want to chew his fingernails. He cycles through the rooms until he finds a bathroom. A baby died there, and he realizes that this house is “not a game” but “a true crime documentary” (288). He can feel the house trying to get inside him, and he starts to think about how much he hates Nick. His face is a mess, and he reflects that he is now as ugly as he deserves to be. His thoughts return to the idea of murdering Nick. Owen cycles through the rooms until he comes to a familiar wood-paneled basement.

Hamish and Lore enter a hoarder’s family room. A woman is watching the television, which shows “scenes of war, of White House insurrection, of rallies and red hats, of the man with the face like a melted citronella candle” (292). When Hamish speaks, the woman shushes them, and Lore identifies the woman as her mother. Lore says that her mother was always away from home with a guy, but when Lore got older, all her mother did was sit around and watch “this shit.” Her mother was home but still not present.

Owen realizes that he is now in Nick’s basement. He thinks of Nick’s “famously cool” father and sees a 15-year-old Nick crying, his belt undone. Then, he sees Nick’s father pulling up his underwear. Nick’s father offers the young Nick some schnapps to ease the pain, but Nick refuses. When Nick’s father passes by Owen, he winks. Owen turns back to the young Nick, who says accusingly that Owen never noticed what his father was doing to him or how it kept happening. Owen cries for Nick and for all the pain that he has witnessed in this place.

Owen beats himself up for not seeing that Nick was in pain when they were all teenagers. He condemns himself as a worthless, selfish “parasite,” but he is not sure whether these are his thoughts, his father’s words, or the house’s ideas. He knows that the house hates him, and he realizes that its reasons have nothing to do with him. He can tell that the house needs him. Owen begins to feel that he can still make something of himself and his life. Then, he looks into a mirror and realizes that he now looks like he is made of the parts of a house. The house tells him that if he lets it all the way inside, the house will let him out. He thinks that maybe the house loves him and his friends, and he knows exactly what room it will show him next.

In the next room, Owen finds his father, whose skin is grayish yellow. Owen sees himself, 10 years younger, kneeling by his father’s bed. His life was stable then, and he felt pretty good. When his father summoned him, he hoped that the man wanted to reconcile. However, his father just wanted one more chance to hurt Owen.

Now, as Owen watches the scene before him, the dying man tells the younger Owen that it’s not too late to kill himself and that he knows that his son always wanted to do so. Owen finds the blue suede bag containing the hospice drugs and pours them all into the man’s mouth. He watches his father die and tells him, “I hate you, too” (306). Young Owen disappears, and the real Owen begins to peel his skin as though it is wallpaper, knowing that the house is inside him now. Suddenly, arms reach out and pull him through the wall, and he screams.

Having pulled Owen into the marginally safer crawlspace, Lore and Hamish do their best to clean his injuries, but he remains unconscious for hours. Hamish sleeps while Lore watches over Owen, talking to him. She says that she used to think being alone was her superpower and that she didn’t need anyone. Then, she found the Covenant, which made them all stronger. She compares friendship to a house that can go bad and must be torn down. Owen wakes up, and Lore confesses that she is messing up the new game that she has been working on; it needs him, she says. Owen wants to work with her too. Owen tells her that Nick led them here and that the house got inside him. Lore realizes that they let Nick come here alone, without even realizing it; she believes that it’s their fault that this has happened. He tells her that Nick said Matty is dead, but she says that they can still save Nick.

Lore and Owen tell Hamish the plan, but Hamish is angry with Nick. Owen explains that the house is alive; when it took Owen over, he wasn’t himself anymore. Now, as time passes, they stick to the safer crawlspace and never go into the rooms alone. Owen explains that the house itself is the ghost and that the people are its memories. Their homes were full of such pain and horror that their houses “went bad and joined this place,” which is the “hell of bad houses. Where broken, hate-poisoned places go after they die” (315). They all watch for Nick, wondering if he’s still there.

Lore, Owen, and Hamish can feel the place wearing away their mental well-being. Hamish cries, Lore feels empty and cold, and Owen feels lost. The house is killing their hope.

The friends know that they will hate each other soon. One day, while Owen watches Lore and Hamish fight, he realizes that he wants to kill them; in this moment, he realizes that the house has them. He is just about to say something about how the house always wins when Nick walks in.

Nick moves quickly, grabbing Lore and holding a knife to her throat. Lore tells the others to kill Nick, but Owen cries out that Matty isn’t dead. He then points his flashlight right into Nick’s face. He sees Nick’s pupils contract. Nick says that Owen can’t know that. When Nick starts to speak again, Hamish knocks him out.