Status Updates From The Staircase in the Woods

Author makes a poignant remark that once this was said he fell catatonic, if the house was holding him up what would be left of Nick if it left? How much of us are summations of our trauma and the aftermath of how we deal w it. Without it, who are we now?

“The heart is where the home is” they must find the original house inside the house, they follow the pipes. Down. It's painfully hot and they land on a staircase

They attack him and to get it all to stop, O yells that Matty is alive (he doesn’t know for sure but when the house entered him as he was wounded he started to know the house and it’s knowledge) they drag N to the crawlspace and O says that he knows what his dad did to him and it wasn’t his fault and they’re sorry for not realizing his pain. He was in the house and the house was in him.

If they couldn’t save Matty then they’ll save Nick. He went after Matty alone last time and they dk how much of his actions this time around were the house or actually him. They left messages of love throughout the house for Nick to find

The house still gets to them slowly and they are beginning to hate each other. Nick walks in

O thinks the house needed him, urgently. He feels that if he lets it in, it’ll let him out. It doesn’t hate him. He knows the next room will be w his father who says he hate him. O says I hate you too.

L/H dragged O into the crawlspace he was bleeding from biting his fingers.

Nick came in alone and it got him. Finding Matty was the final straw. But this time they weren’t alone when they entered.

Somehow the house poisoned N and he wanted to poison them.

Since H got the room he almost OD’d in, Owen got his dad and knife, L got her mom watching fox (AHHH) and book and the rest are all panic-inducing maybe the house needs more experiences to grow or build?

O gets to N’s childhood basement where he most likely got SA’d and how he missed all the pain his friends went thru

O/N start fighting, snap out of it saying house is getting to them. The next room is the girls bedroom again! (O references Exit 8 lol, looking for anomalies) he talks to her and she stabs him but nothing. No blood no pain. NPCs. They find N’s lighter he said he didn’t have anymore. O knows he’s been here before (sees staircases in his eyes), N said he found M’s dead body but this place won’t let him die

In the crawl space L/H don’t feel the influence of the house as much and they saw an empty soup can. Someone was here. They find shoes the same brand as Matty wore. Then 2 eyeholes that lookin in behind the bookcase of the gray room.

Staircase was like a bear trap and the house was trying to get you to die?

H’s inner monologue is dark af after may nightmarish/creepy/murderous rooms he thinks are he’s a cheater, not rly present father, attempted suicide, old alcohol/drug problems, house is def getting to him he punches mirror and takes glass to his throat before L can nut punch him to stop

She talks him down and they decide to hate the house back. Start breaking stuff and they end yo between the walls

Then: Nick hoping to take some heat off the group said he bought some bad drugs and Matty tripped tf out and ran off, went to juvie, but they were still ostracized from the community

O/N try to fake out the house by passng thru the door and coming right back without closing it to see if rooms will change. The dead man in bed moves from his attic to their living room

They decide to go together and when they enter bedroom w sick man resembling Owen’s father he slams the door shut reflexively, but ultimately separating L/H and O/N cuz when they open it again it’s an Xmas tree living room.

L/H are in kitchen of woman who poisoned her son (Lore saw a doc of this) and in the cabinets in blood it says home is where the heart is in Matty’s handwriting

Owen briefly sees his knife, Lore sees her book w hate tweets inside instead; she thinks this isn’t a haunted house but a game

They start fighting and when she goes to pee she sees a mirror w help written on it and starts thinking she should do this on her own, hateful thoughts of the others the door even starts to close. Like the house wants you to be alone

There’s a finger in the cake. Hamish wants to stay guarding the door to girls room he’s scared (which is unlike his hs devil may care self) and she resembled one of his kids.

Next house is a murder house that Hamish sold when he was in real estate

Nick this whole time was sending the group emails, sightings, Reddit threads and only O responded

They see another door that leads to a 70s style dining room w moldy cake but they decide to gather their wits and use the girls computer. Owen sees a photo of a bloody knife on it, Lore reads her diary (she killed herself w knife cuz her crush didn’t like her back), and she crawls out from under the bed. They run and have to grab Owen cuz he was talking to the girl about the knife, about wanting to be loved too