The Fifth Step

Chapter One: Gray Hollow

The house on Coldwater Street rose like a spine against the late October sky, all narrow bones and angles. Three stories. A steep staircase turned twice and ended at a small landing that faced a blank wall as if the builder had thought better of finishing a doorway. The paint along the wall was thin and yellowed, like old teeth. The windows blinked in the wind.

“It’s not much to look at,” Tom said, but his voice had a brightness in it. He swung his arm toward the front steps. “Solid bones. I can work with bones.”

Erin stood on the walk with her coat collar tucked tight. She was smaller than Tom and stood with her weight balanced like she was ready to step forward and back at the same time. She noticed the weeds growing in a straight line along the foundation, and the fact that the front window had night-dark curtains pushed to either side and not tied. She felt the house. She had learned to trust that feeling.

Caleb carried a box that sagged around the bottom and stared up at the three floors with mild disgust. He was fifteen, tall, and already thought like a lawyer. June, nine, bounced and clapped and then stopped, staring past everyone at the front hall. “The stairs are big,” she said, very softly. “They look like they go up forever.”

The previous family’s name was still on the mailbox: Ross. The realtor had not said much about them. The town whispered. Erin’s school counselor instincts had filled in the rest. Vanished without a trace was the phrase that kept showing up in quiet conversations and in the odd, sliding glance people gave when they asked where the Gradys were moving.

They opened doors. They tested light switches. The kitchen smelled like old coffee. The basement stairs went down to a room with a low ceiling and a single bulb that made a perfect circle of light. In the far wall, there was a small bricked-up chamber with a black pipe coming through it—an old coal room, someone had said. There was a draft at their ankles. June stood on the bottom step and hugged herself. “There’s air coming from upstairs,” she said, puzzled. “From the landing.”

“That’s not how drafts work,” Tom said, but he put a hand on the rail and felt it, too. Cold, from above.

That night they ate takeout on the kitchen floor. The house creaked in a way that houses do when they are settling around you. The radiator knocked in a slow rhythm. Erin stacked the cardboard containers and washed her hands at the sink, thinking about what she could make warm in this cold room. She ran her thumb over a thin ridge on the backsplash. There were marks there, shallow and parallel, like someone had dragged a comb through wet plaster.

They went upstairs. The staircase was narrow and steep, the kind that forced you to keep your hand on the rail and your eyes on your feet. The landing halfway up faced the dead wall. Almost too close. If you took one more step than you meant to, you would put your forehead right into the paint.

On the first climb, the wood ticked under their feet in an even rhythm, like a clock with a track.

At bedtime, June came out in her socks and stood at the top of the stairs. “I’ll go get my bear,” she announced, and went down. The house was quiet enough that they all listened to her feet. One. Two. Three. Four. Then, as she climbed, they heard it, the extra sound. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

June froze and turned her head a little, as if listening over her shoulder. She resumed. The sound resumed, just behind her. She stopped again. It stopped with her.

“Old wood,” Tom called, cheerful and sure, stepping into the hall. “It echoes. Don’t you worry.”

June started up again. Tom watched her feet and counted in his head. The wood answered like a metronome. When he took a step toward the landing, the sound stopped, as if a hand had lifted from a piano key.

“See?” Tom said to Erin, grinning. “First-night jitters.”

Erin looked down at the landing and the blank wall beyond it, close as a face. She did not grin back. She lifted June into her arms at the top of the stairs and held her a second too long. When she set the girl down, June’s socks were dusty, as if she had walked in flour.