The Third Floor Landing

I never thought much about the layout of our new house, a narrow Victorian with a split staircase that curved like a serpent’s spine. The third floor was mostly unused, a dusty storeroom we’d been meaning to clear out for months. My wife, Clara, had a cat named Mister Whiskers, and I had a golden retriever named Gus. Both of them, without fail, would stop at the bottom of the stairs, ears flat, tails tucked, and refuse to ascend. Mister Whiskers would sometimes sit on the third step, staring upward with unblinking eyes, but he’d never go further. Gus would whine and pace, but he wouldn’t set a paw on the first step. I chalked it up to the creaky wood or the draft, but Clara had her suspicions.

Last Saturday, the 18th, I returned from a 24-hour shift as a marine engineer on a cargo vessel. I was exhausted, my ears still ringing with the hum of the engines. Clara was in our bedroom, which was on the second floor, and we sat on the edge of the bed talking about our plans, the weekend, the fact that we needed to fix the dripping faucet in the en-suite bathroom. I stood by the small sink outside the bathroom, rummaging for my toothbrush and toothpaste, still chatting. The window to my left was shut, the curtains drawn, the blinds closed. The only light came from the bedside lamp.

As I turned to respond to something Clara said, I caught a flicker of movement on the wall beside the window—a dark silhouette, quick as a blink, shifting from the curtain toward the closet. It was too tall to be a cat, too thin to be a man. It wasn’t my shadow; I was standing at the sink with the light behind me, and my shadow fell toward the bed. The shape slid across the wall and vanished into the seam where the wall met the ceiling. I froze, the toothbrush hanging from my mouth, and asked Clara if she’d seen it. She looked at me blankly, then at the wall, and said no. I told myself it was fatigue, a trick of the light.

But the next morning, I found the door to the third floor ajar. The door was always closed, we never opened it. The cat was sitting at the bottom of the stairs, his pupils dilated, his body low. Gus was barking at the top of his lungs from the kitchen, but he wouldn’t come near the stairs. I went up, my heart doing a strange tap dance in my chest. The room was as we’d left it—boxes, an old dresser, a rolled-up rug. But in the dust on the floor, there were bare footprints, small, like a child’s, leading from the door to the window and back. The window was slightly open, the screen intact. No one could have gotten in or out.

Clara laughed it off, saying it was probably our imaginations, the house settling. But that night, as I was brushing my teeth again, I saw it again: the shape on the wall, more defined this time, a thin, hunched figure with long arms, lingering near the window. It turned its head, and for a split second, I thought I saw a face—pale, with dark hollows for eyes—staring directly at me. I dropped my toothbrush and spun around, but there was nothing. The wall was empty. I grabbed Clara’s arm and pointed, but she only saw the wallpaper.

I decided to investigate the third floor more thoroughly. I brought a flashlight and a hammer, I don’t know why. The room felt colder than the rest of the house, the air heavy with a musty smell, like old bones and wet leaves. I moved the boxes aside, and under the dust, I found a small trapdoor in the corner, hidden by a frayed area rug. It was padlocked, but the lock was rusted, and it snapped with a single tug. I lifted the door and found a narrow set of stairs descending into the dark, a crawlspace between the second and first floors, sealed off from the rest of the house. I climbed down, my heart pounding, the flashlight beam cutting through the pitch black.

At the bottom, I found a tiny room, no bigger than a closet, with a dirt floor. And on that dirt floor, there were dozens of small, worn dolls, arranged in a circle. Their eyes were sewn shut, but their mouths were open in silent screams. In the center of the circle, there was a photograph: a young boy, maybe six or seven, with dark hair, staring at the camera with an expression that was too old, too knowing. I recognized the background—the same bedroom, the same window, the same wallpaper. I felt a cold hand on my shoulder, and I turned to see Clara, who had followed me down, her face pale.

She whispered, ‘I used to live here as a child.’ I stared at her, confused. She’d never told me that. She pointed to the photograph. ‘That’s my brother, Michael. He died in this house, in this room, when we were kids. He fell down the stairs, but they never found his body. They said he ran away, but I know he never left. I’ve always felt him.’ She knelt down and picked up one of the dolls, its head lolling to the side. ‘He used to play with these,’ she said. ‘He would make them talk to him.’

I don’t know what happened next. I remember a loud bang, the trapdoor slamming shut above us, plunging us into darkness. The flashlight died, and I heard Clara scream, then the sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor above. I fumbled for the door, but it wouldn’t budge. I could hear Mister Whiskers yowling from the other side, and Gus barking frantically. And then, a voice, thin and childish, came from the darkness beside me: ‘You found my friends.’ I felt a small hand slip into mine, cold and dry. I couldn’t move. The story doesn’t have an ending because the story is still happening. We’re still down there, in the dark, with Michael. And the dolls are watching. And the stairs are waiting.