The Stairwell Game

My name is Elias Thorne, and I’m seventeen. I’ve always been drawn to the strange and unexplained, but lately, my own house has become the source of my deepest dread. It’s a creaking Victorian relic, over a century old, nestled at the end of a maple-lined lane in rural Vermont. Old houses make noise, everyone says so. But what I’ve been hearing isn’t the settling of timber or the scuttling of mice.

It started about a month ago, just after midnight. I was in my room on the second floor, reading by lamplight, when I heard it: a rhythmic thumping from the attic stairs, just down the hall. It sounded exactly like someone bouncing a rubber ball, slowly and deliberately, one step at a time. Thump… thump… thump… It would travel the length of the stairs, pause, then start again from the top. I waited, breath held, but the sound persisted, a maddening, steady beat that seemed to be counting down to something. I finally mustered the courage to investigate, but as I reached the attic door, the sound stopped. The door was closed, as it always was, and the air around it was cold, starkly colder than the rest of the hall.

That was only the beginning. Two nights later, I woke to a sound that will never leave me. It was a low, guttural groan, rising from the floor directly beneath my bed, as if the house itself were in agony. I thought my parents might be moving furniture in the basement, but they were asleep, and my father’s snoring could be heard from their bedroom down the hall. The groan seemed to last for an eternity, vibrating through the floorboards, and then it ceased as abruptly as it had come.

But the most terrifying incident came last week, when my best friend, Callum, was sleeping over. We were in the living room, watching a movie on the ground floor, and I got up to put some dishes in the kitchen. Callum was on the couch, facing away from me, less than ten feet away. As I stepped into the kitchen, I heard a voice—not my voice, not Callum’s—a high, thin scream, almost a cry of agony, that seemed to come from the stairwell leading to the second floor. I dropped the plates and spun around, but Callum was still on the couch, his face pale as he stared at the staircase. ‘Did you hear that?’ he whispered. ‘It sounded like a little girl being murdered.’

I didn’t sleep that night. And I started to notice a pattern. The noises always come from the stairwell, or the attic above it. And they always seem to be responses to something—a ball down the stairs when someone walks past, a groan when the house is quiet, a scream when someone mentions the attic. It’s as if something is listening, waiting for us to acknowledge it, and then it plays its part.

Last night, I decided to test my theory. I set up my phone to record the stairwell, and I stood at the bottom, facing the attic door. I spoke aloud, my voice trembling, ‘If you’re there, show me a sign.’ For a long moment, there was nothing. Then I heard it: a faint, metallic clatter, like a small object being dropped. I walked up the stairs, my heart pounding, and at the top, on the dusty floor, lay a tarnished silver locket, its chain snapped. I hadn’t seen it before—I knew every inch of that house. I picked it up, and it was ice cold.

I opened the locket, and inside was a faded photograph of a young girl with braided hair, her eyes wide and sorrowful. On the inside of the locket, there was an inscription: ‘For Mary, who loved to play.’ The name ‘Mary’ meant nothing to me, but I felt a chill as I realized the game she loved might not be over. The thumping, the groans, the screams—they were all part of a game, a game of hide and seek that had never ended. And I, by acknowledging her, had just become the seeker.

Now, as I write this, I hear the ball again, bouncing down the attic steps. But this time, it’s accompanied by a child’s giggle, soft and playful, coming from directly behind me. I’m too afraid to turn around. The locket is around my neck now, like some sort of charm, but I feel its weight growing heavier with each passing hour. I think I’ve started a game that I can’t win, and the only way to stop it is to play to the end. But I don’t know the rules, and I don’t know what Mary wants. All I know is that the stairwell has become a place of terror, and every step I take there reminds me that I am not alone.