The Staircase in the Woods

by Chuck Wendig

Sometimes friendships didn’t break in some big dramatic way. Sometimes they just dried out, curled up like a leaf on the ground, and turned to dirt. Like all things inevitably did.

Soon, they would come to hate one another. It wasn’t there, yet. Hate was a strong word, Owen knew. But the road was straight, and the destination was clear.

You bring your things—all your most precious stuff. You pack into this place your whole life—and that effect is multiplicative. Life makes life, a fungal efflorescence of existence begetting existence.

And it is in all this that a house becomes a home: You imprint yourself upon it, and it imprints itself upon you in return. It becomes a part of your very identity—your house, your home, is part of the tapestry that is you. You carry it with you, in your heart, to the end of things.

It may seem strange to think of a house watching anything, but when a house becomes a home, it becomes imbued with life. Alive in an almost literal way—and certainly aware. If a house becomes haunted, it is not haunted by the ghosts of its inhabitants but rather by the memories of those inhabitants—it is the house that remembers, and the house that records and replays the lives lived there.

It was hateful, yes. But it was also alone. And houses—homes—crave company. To be empty is the worst fate, and so the house, whether consciously or not, called out. It sang a hammer-and-saw song to other homes like it. A song of blood and fire.