“All I’m saying, Doctor, is that children do appear to be more liable than older people to pierce that veil, to have experiences beyond the–”
“Nonsense! Of course children with their innocent, undeveloped minds are going to hear things go bump in the night, to see shapes under the bed and certainly they believe what they’re seeing is–”
The conversation went on as the rain pattered against the sitting-room windows in waves, riding the gusts and appearing almost to applaud one speaker, then another, and then drowning out the voices completely as a vigorous zephyr threw droplets against the glass panes like handfuls of gravel thrown by a mischievous youth.
Dinner had been served to the twenty or so guests in attendance at the party and consumed forthwith, drinks admired in the shining light of candles and sipped, not without increasingly passionate discourse about the efficacy of bourbon barrels versus virgin oak barrels for aging scotch…in other words, the sorts of things about which people enjoy arguing when their physical needs are more than met and their mental appetites begin to growl for sustenance.
As so often happens on nights with dark, inclement weather, dark inclement conversation prevailed…and so, as the evening party drew on, more and more of the discussion revolved around spirits, ghostly and ghastly experiences, and the occult.
The gentleman most boisterous and, as it happened, deepest in his cups this evening was one Dr. P____, a pragmatic and erudite man who had recently opened premises in town and had quickly used his charm and undeniable skill as a physician to amass a respectable practice. We find him leaning (somewhat precariously) against a corner of the fireplace with one hand, the other earnestly grasping the shoulder of a bespectacled fellow by the name of Matthias, whose crossed arms and quavering toe announced his feelings towards the conversation.
“…was nothing more than the cracking of trees as the sap froze overnight! Sir, look around you…this is the year 1973, not some backwards Bavarian hamlet at the turn of the century willing to place belief in every superstitious fool who says he saw a devil.”
Matthias shifted his weight from one foot to the other but stubbornly held his ground. “1973 or 1397, there is ample evidence to suggest that children are susceptible to influence and energy, be it from this world or another. The act of ritual for a child in particular seems to be a conduit for all manner of strange things…observe, for instance, how a simple Ouija board has borne the fruit of paranormal activity for so many! Surely even you, Doctor, must admit that there are more examples of this kind of thing than can be explained away by–”
Neither man was doing much to sway the opinion of the other…but perhaps each giving his counterpart something to chew on during quiet nights. As the evening grew late and the knots of conversation around the room began to unravel, Matthias found himself again by the fire, staring into his glass of tawny port. He was beginning to think about calling up a cab for the ride home across town, when an unfamiliar voice from behind rumbled to life.
“I agree with what you said earlier.”
“Hmm?” Matthias turned, eyebrows raised questioningly. Standing before him was a man he had seen around the room over the course of the evening, not interacting much but always keenly present.
“I agree, with children being susceptible to…to things not of this world. Things adults can neither see, nor touch.”
Matthias offered a raise of his glass as well as a handshake, inviting the man closer to the fire to speak. He accepted both, and Matthias noted a slight clamminess to the hand…and that the fellow’s amber whisky disappeared quickly down his throat, with another sent shortly after as a search party. It did not report back, but the spirits seemed to untangle the man’s tongue and he began to speak.
Yours…are the first ears this story has reached, and I assure you every word is true.
It happened when I was ten years old, but I had already had a thing about rituals for a few years…I don’t think it ever progressed to the point where it would be considered a compulsion or anything like that, it was just that doing things in a certain way or a certain order was lucky or, well, just felt right. It may have started in church actually, now that I think about it…there was definitely a comfort in an order of operations you could always depend upon. Whenever I got home from playing outside or whatever, I would always knock on my own bedroom door before going in…I don’t know how that started but when I would go in without doing it, I felt like I was being rude.
The thing that really got me in that house, though, was the basement stairs…I know, it’s a bit of a cliche for a kid to have a thing about the basement, but it’s true. I wasn’t SCARED of the basement, though, it was just…magnetic. I would sit at the top of the stairs that went from the kitchen down to the basement, and just relax. There was something about the cool draft that wafted up, that hint of a dank cementy smell, it was just kind of my happy place and it drove my mother nuts…especially during the winter when I would be letting all kinds of cold air up into the house, she was so confused about the skyrocketing heating bills until she realized what I’d been doing.
What she *didn’t* realize, however, was what happened one summer afternoon there at the top of the stairs…or what would happen because of that day.
I was there, in the kitchen, and I remember the smell of dust and the quiet…it was fairly hot outside, mid-June, and sitting there in the doorway where the kitchen tile met open space the cool draft was especially delightful. I had one of those toys, the coiled spring things…a Slinky, that’s right, thank you. They were fairly new at that time in the early 50’s and incredibly popular, but my father had gotten his hands on one somehow and had given it to me for Christmas before he and my mother…well, let’s just say it was the last Christmas present that came from him in person. Anyway, I was there at the top of the stairs with my Slinky and it only seemed natural to, you know, send it down. It did the shhhhink-shhhhhink journey downward…now, there were eleven stairs on that basement staircase…the light from the kitchen only reached the first seven steps, the last four were completely dark until you got down there and fumbled around for the light switch on the right. Just from the sound, though, I could tell it had made it all the way down…I could count the last few stairs, plus it just sounded different when it got to the bottom off of the wood and onto the concrete. Well, it did the last few shhhhink–shhhhhink-shhhhinks and then that higher pitched coiling-up sound as it came to rest at the bottom…I stood up, getting ready to go down and get it, when I heard the mailman at the door slipping letters inside the mail slot. I got up and ran to the other room, around the corner and to the front door and grabbed the mail…I don’t think there was really ever anything for me in the mail besides on birthdays and holidays but it was always exciting seeing letters come in, even just catalogs and things like that. Anyway I grabbed the things the mailman had slipped in and walked back to the kitchen…and there was the Slinky, sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor on the tile, a few feet behind where I’d been sitting less than a minute ago. For a moment I thought maybe my mother had come home through the back door or something but I knew she was still out picking up my sister from dance class…and you can just tell the feel of an empty house.
So picture yourself sitting there, looking at a Slinky you damn well know you just sent tumbling down the stairs, so what do you do? You send it right back down. Well, down it went, shhhhink-shhhhink, down eleven steps and gave that little slither of a death-rattle as it coiled up on the floor at the bottom. I must have waited there at the top of the stairs for ten minutes after that…just waiting there, not sure what to do. I don’t know what I expected to happen but, well, nothing did…and so I figured I should recreate the experiment. I went to the front door, slowly counted to ten, and came back to the kitchen…and there it was. A silvery coil of metal, resting in the middle of the room…I had heard nothing, the house felt as empty as it had a moment ago, a cool breeze still emanating from the open maw of the basement door.
This became my new summertime obsession…over the next few days I made a habit of it, sending the toy down the stairs and running to the living room, hiding my eyes and counting to ten, running back out and finding it returned. Weird? Sure, it seemed weird, but after a few times it just became, you know, the way it worked. After a while though I found myself wanting to get to the bottom of things…even if it meant breaking the ritual. I started counting just a little bit faster, or rushing back around the corner just after I hit ten…but it didn’t seem to make a difference. And then…”
The man broke off his story, looking down at his hands between his knees as he sat in the firelight. Matthias could see the glow of the flames reflected in the man’s eyes as they met gazes…the stranger was the first to break the stare, bowing his head into shadow.
“And then I peeked.
I had sent the Slinky down one afternoon, ran to the front door as usual and started to count…but this time, as I got to around 6 i just barely looked around the corner and saw it. An arm, pale, desiccated, and impossibly long, stretching out from the basement stairway like someone holding a fishing pole, and at the end a…well, I can only describe it as a claw. It looked rather like the talons of a crow, but much larger and…somehow human. It was clutching the chrome spiral of my Slinky and as the arm stretched silently out, hanging there suspended for a moment in the quiet of the afternoon, I could see long wispy gray hairs gently waving in the lazy breeze. It silently and gracefully set the Slinky on the floor and then withdrew, snaking back down the stairs with a barely-audible rasp of friction against the wood with a gentle thump as it fell upon each descending step, and out of sight. That was the end of the game for THAT day, that’s for damn sure.
It wasn’t the end of my fascination, though, and now that I had seen my mysterious play partner, as horrifying as it had appeared, it didn’t feel right to call it quits for good.
As I mentioned, my mother knew nothing of this aspect of my little game…all she knew was that I loved playing with that Slinky and loved being underfoot in the kitchen. The same cannot be said for my sister Lia, though…she was three years younger than me which put me squarely in charge of pretty much everything. I decided what cartoons we would watch, what word-games we would play in the backseat of the car on long drives, and of course I loved the authority. That’s why when we were alone in the house together one day I decided to let Lia in on the secret…I took her to the kitchen and showed her how I sent the Slinky down, took her hand and ran to the front door, we counted and came back to the kitchen and the look on her face when she saw the toy in the middle of the floor was priceless…I thought her eyes were going to fall out! She begged me to do the whole ritual again, and again after that, before she got up the nerve to try it herself. I watched as a sort of referee as she put the Slinky on the top stair, gave it a nudge, and as it shhhink shhhhhinked its way down we ran to the other room and counted in unison out loud to ten. Hurrying back to the kitchen, I saw the Slinky there…but it wasn’t in the middle of the room. It was sitting there right at the top of the stairs, in the doorway itself. My sister still thought it was amazing but I was a little confused; this was the first time things had gone differently in that way and I wasn’t sure what to think of it. I gave the Slinky a push, we went to the door and counted, and came back…and there it was, in the center of the kitchen floor, like “normal”! Lia tried it again, and we were extra careful to do things exactly the same way. She pushed it down the stairs, we ran to the door and counted out loud to ten. We walked back into the kitchen and…no Slinky. Not in the middle of the floor, not at the top of the stairs, nothing…until Lia went to the basement doorway. “There it is!” she said, pointing down…and there it was. I mentioned earlier there were eleven steps on the staircase, with the light from the kitchen only reaching the top seven…and it was there, on the seventh step, only halfway protruding from the inky darkness, that small coil of carbon steel. I remember slamming the door shut and locking it, and told Lia she would never, ever play the stairway game without me there. Our mother came home later that afternoon and found it while she was bringing laundry down to the basement…so, I got my Slinky AND an earful of yelling about leaving my toys where people could step on them. “I could have broken my neck!” was definitely in there SOMEwhere. I didn’t mind, I only knew there was no way I was going to go down there myself to get it.
Summer jogged on towards Autumn, and I was beginning to have more things taking up my time…I had started football practice and was making friends, so I wasn’t at home as often as I had been. It felt like Lia was a little resentful but I couldn’t just hang out with my baby sister all the time, and anyway my new friends didn’t whine and ask questions nearly as often as she did. I started coming home a little later, and a little later still, and soon I was just barely getting home in time for dinner…I was used to getting a finger-shaking when I came crashing through the door, helmet and pads under my arms, but one night in mid-September my mother seemed more…frantic, and scared, than angry. She asked if Lia had come with me to football (of course she hadn’t done so) and said that she hadn’t been able to find her anywhere for hours now. She had been hoping Lia was playing some kind of hide-and-seek game, but as I said, you can just tell the feel of an empty house. I helped search around the house as well, poking through the closets and opening the bedrooms calling her name, but my sister was just…gone. What I did see, the thing that stopped me in my tracks, was my Slinky up on the kitchen counter next to the sink, and I knew I had left it on the shelf upstairs next to my bed. My mother saw me looking at it and said she had found it while searching for Lia; it had been sitting on the bottom stair just above the basement floor. I remember hearing my mother’s voice from over my shoulder as I took it, ‘You have got to stop playing with that thing there, it’s dangerous!’
The next few days were a blur of police detectives and family and friends coming in and out of the house, and I went through the motions of looking around the neighborhood with them…but I was certain I knew where she had gone. I knew she had been playing the Stairway Game. She had pushed the slinky. She had gone to the front door and counted. She had come back to the stairs, and she had gone down into the dark, perhaps following the beckoning of a horrible gray hand. I don’t believe my mother ever stopped searching for Lia, just as I don’t believe I ever really started.”