Floating Staircase

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Sometime during the night I was awakened by the sound of bare feet padding along the upstairs hallway. Dazed, I shook myself out of bed, just partially conscious of Jodie’s slumbering body beside mine, and stepped into the hallway, my eyes still fuzzy with sleep. I groped for the light switch, but it had apparently disappeared. Listening, I could hear the sound of the bare feet moving swiftly down the stairs.

For a long-drawn-out moment, I did not move. I couldn’t tell if I was fully awake, still dreaming, or caught in some abstract stasis of half sleep. My skin felt frozen while my insides were burning up as if with the onset of fever. Like a ghost, I crossed to the second-floor balcony and peered down into the foyer. At first I saw nothing. The longer I stared, I saw what appeared to be a small child standing motionless at the bottom of the staircase against one wall. Without pause, I turned and began moving down the stairs, one hand snaking along the banister in the darkness for support.

But when I reached the bottom of the stairs, the child had vanished. Moonlight pooled in through the large foyer windows and painted glowing blue panels on the carpet. I stood there, my body shivering yet covered in a tacky film of sweat, unable to decide what I should do next.

“Elijah . . . ?” It was only a whisper—not even a whisper, as my constricted throat was incapable of creating such a sound as forceful as a whisper at the moment—and the ghost boy did not acknowledge me.

I thought I heard something behind me. I turned. For a split second I forgot where I was. Oddly serene, I continued down the hallway searching for a boy I knew was not there. Everything appeared dramatically overemphasized—my own breathing, the creaks and pops in the floorboards, the sound of my bare feet transitioning from the sticky hardwood to the carpeted front hall. Beneath my feet the carpet felt overly fibrous, almost sharp. My footsteps shushed along.

There is clarity here, I thought, not certain as to what it actually meant.

The hallway emptied out into the living room.

I thought, Reality is a state of mind, just like dreaming, just like fiction. Everything is fiction. The trick is to grab on to something—to hold on to it for all you’re worth—until you’re able to regain some semblance of normalcy again.

I thought, Find an anchor.

This was where I stopped, right there in the center of the living room, cold and alone and not quite sure what the hell I was doing. I could see the bulbous piercing eye of the moon through one of the windows; I could feel the light from the streetlamps needling against my retinas. I thought I heard the basement door open at the other end of the house . . . thought I heard those same small, bare feet taking the steps quickly, two at a time, descending into that freezing, forgotten darkness . . .

But I did not move.

I was done chasing ghosts.