The Staircase in the Woods

by Chuck Wendig

On Friday, June 5th, 1998, five teenagers went into the woods surrounding Highchair Rocks in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Only four of them came out.

“He always was what he was, and he told us from the beginning. When someone tells you who they are, believe them. Isn’t that the saying? You knew who he was and who you were voting for. You probably voted for him the other times, too, you just won’t say it out loud. You took the hat off, oooh, but I bet you still own it. If I squint, I can still see it on your head.” She rolled her eyes. “Half of America put the hat on and took the mask off and that was that, and that’s where we’re at now.”

Trying not to think about how there was something worse than a father who hated you—one who didn’t care about you at all.

They were each the other’s respite. A safe space, a found family, a real home, existing wherever they each were at any time—they could always shelter in place with one another.

She let the anger have its moment, then she hit it over the head and threw it in a deep grave, and from that earth she grew a garden of vigorous indifference.

That thought, sung to him like a song from outside himself. A lullaby of sorts. The comfort of doing nothing. The peace of waiting. The easy contentment of slow death.

That was the funny thing about a fear of the dark: you weren’t really afraid of it, but rather what lurked within it. A perfect emblem of the fear of the unknown.

On that mattress was something else, a body-shaped thing swaddled in filthy bedsheets, bedsheets the color of rust and old chocolate. The body-shaped thing on the lumpy mattress sat straight up.

It said: THE HEART IS WHERE THE HOME IS. It was Matty’s handwriting.