The Hollow Steps

I grew up in Meerssen, a village tucked between rolling hills and the slow Meuse. There was a house on Kerkstraat that had stood empty since before I was born. It was a narrow, tall building, squeezed between a bakery and a vacant lot, its brick façade stained dark with damp. The windows on the ground floor were grimy, but through them I could see the entrance hall, where the staircase rose and then collapsed in the middle, each step sagging as if the wood had given up. The wallpaper, a faded pattern of roses, hung loose in strips, and the curtains were torn, fluttering weakly whenever a draft found its way in.

I was always drawn to that house. No matter how often I walked past, I felt a pull, a quiet insistence that I should look, that there was something there for me. My mother warned me to stay away, saying it was cursed, but she never explained. My father just shook his head, muttering about a tragedy that had happened before we moved here.

One humid afternoon in late August, my best friend Rik and I decided to finally explore. Rik was braver than me, or maybe more foolish. We slipped through the rusted gate at the side, where the house was attached to a row of garages. The garages were dark, their doors half-off. Inside one, we found an axe and a scythe leaning against the wall, their handles grey with dust. In another, a wheelbarrow, its wheel cracked. The tools looked old, but clean, as if they had been used recently.

We pushed open the back door, which gave way with a groan. Inside, the air was thick with the smell of damp rot. The kitchen was a wreck: cabinets hanging open, dishes shattered. A layer of dust covered everything, but in the dust on the floor, I noticed faint, dragging marks, as if something heavy had been pulled through, recently. Rik didn’t notice; he was already heading for the stairs.

The staircase was worse up close. The steps were not just sagging; they were cracked and hollow, the wood rotten. Tentatively, we tested the bottom step. It held. The second. The third. But halfway up, the steps gave way, and we had to jump over a gap where the treads had collapsed completely. Beyond that, the stairs became more solid, but they felt wrong, as if they were slightly too narrow, too steep.

We reached the landing. There were three doors. The first led to a bedroom, where the wallpaper was peeling in great sheets, revealing not plaster but what looked like charcoal. The second was a bathroom, the bathtub filled with black water. The third door was locked. Rik put his shoulder to it, and it burst open.

Inside, the room was empty, save for a single chair in the center, facing the window. The walls were bare, but there were scratches on the floor, deep gouges that formed a pattern. As we stepped closer, I saw that the scratches were letters, carved into the wood. They read: ‘THE STEPS LISTEN.’

A chill ran through me. Rik laughed, but it was forced. We heard a sound from below, like footsteps on the collapsed stairs, but not falling through. It was a steady, rhythmic tread, as if someone were walking up them, despite the holes. The sound grew louder, closer. We backed against the wall. The doorknob began to turn.

We didn’t wait. We scrambled through the window, dropping onto the roof of the garage below, then sliding down to the ground. We ran without looking back.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept hearing that tread, over and over. The next day, I returned alone. I had to. The house pulled me back. I went through the front door this time, which was unlocked. The stairs were intact. I walked up, and the steps felt solid under my feet, but they were slightly warm, as if someone had just walked there. I reached the locked room. The door was open. In the center of the room, the chair was facing me. On the floor, the scratches now spelled a different word: ‘MOVE.’

I felt a hand on my shoulder, cold and damp. I turned. No one was there. But the air grew heavy, and the steps beneath my feet began to tremble. I ran down, but the stairs were no longer solid. They were the hollow, rotten ones from yesterday, and I fell through, into darkness.

I woke up in my own bed, covered in dust, with no memory of how I got home. But in my pocket, I found a splinter of wood, smooth and old. And in the mirror, I saw a look in my eyes that wasn’t mine. I haven’t gone back, but every night, I hear the steps. Not in the house, but in my own hallway, coming closer. And I know that the house is not empty. It’s just waiting for its steps to be whole again.