The Thirteenth Stair

The smell of formaldehyde and old paper was the first thing that hit me when I walked through the heavy glass doors of the McAllister Institute of Health Sciences. It was a smell that clung to the walls, the floors, even the people who worked there. I was a freshman nursing student, and my anatomy lab was on the top floor of the eight-story building, a place that already felt like a mausoleum even before I learned its secrets.

Every morning, I trudged up the narrow, creaking stairwell because the elevator was perpetually out of order. The steps were worn smooth by decades of students, and the handrails were cold, metallic, and always slightly damp, as if the building itself was sweating. I counted the steps each time, a nervous habit. There were thirteen steps between each floor. On the ground floor, that was fine. The number thirteen felt like a minor superstition, something you’d laugh off. But by the third floor, I started to feel a weight on my shoulders, a pressure that had nothing to do with my heavy backpack.

It started with the whispers. Not words, exactly, but a soft, sibilant sound that seemed to come from just above my head, as if someone was breathing directly behind me. I’d spin around, but there was never anyone there. The stairwell was silent except for the echo of my own footsteps. But the whispers grew louder each day, and they began to form words. ‘Help us.’ ‘Don’t forget.’ ‘We’re still here.’

One afternoon, I was running late. My 7:30 AM anatomy class had run over, and I had to get to the fourth floor for a clinical skills session. I was bounding up the stairs, taking them two at a time, when I tripped. My foot caught on something—a loose piece of rubber on the stair, or maybe my own shoelace—and I went sprawling face-first onto the landing. My glasses flew off, skittering across the floor. As I scrambled to pick them up, I noticed something odd: the thirteenth step on that landing was slightly discolored, a darker shade of gray than the others, as if it had been stained with something that had seeped deep into the concrete. And there, just at the edge of the step, was a small, painted number: 13. It was in the same faded red as the fire exit signs, but it was positioned so that it was only visible if you looked directly down at the step.

I’d walked that stairwell a hundred times, and I’d never noticed that number before. I touched it, and the paint felt warm, almost alive. A chill ran down my spine. I stood up quickly, put my glasses back on, and hurried to my class, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had disturbed something.

That night, I had a dream. I was back in the stairwell, but it was dark, lit only by a faint, sickly green glow from an emergency light. I was climbing, and the steps were covered in a thin layer of dust. I reached the fourth floor landing, and the thirteenth step was glowing. The number 13 was pulsing, like a heartbeat. I knelt down and touched it. The step gave way, like a trapdoor, and I fell into a darkness that swallowed me whole.

I woke up drenched in sweat. I didn’t sleep again that night.

The next day, I avoided the stairwell. I took the elevator, which, to my surprise, was working. But the elevator was worse. It was old, with a sliding metal door that groaned, and it stopped on every floor except the one I needed, as if it was playing a cruel joke. When I finally reached the eighth floor, the doors opened to reveal a dark hallway. The lights were flickering, and the air was cold. My classroom was at the end of the hall, and I had to walk past a janitor’s closet. As I passed it, I heard a faint scratching sound, like fingernails on metal. I paused, but the scratching stopped. I hurried on.

After class, I tried to use the stairs again, but I was determined not to touch that thirteenth step. I planned to skip it, to bound from the twelfth to the fourteenth. But when I reached the landing, I realized with a jolt that there were only twelve steps on that landing. The thirteenth step was gone. In its place was a smooth, seamless slab of concrete, as if it had never been there.

I told my friend Camille about it, a fellow nursing student who laughed at my fears. ‘You’re just stressed,’ she said. ‘It’s a mind game.’ But I saw the way she looked at the stairwell when she thought I wasn’t watching.

A week later, Camille disappeared. The campus police said she’d dropped out, but her family had no idea where she was. Her belongings were still in her dorm. It was as if she had vanished into thin air.

I was the last person to see her alive. We had been studying together in the library, and she said she was going to take the stairs to the fifth floor to use the restroom. I offered to go with her, but she said she was fine. That was the last time I saw her.

After Camille’s disappearance, I started to investigate. I searched the building’s old records in the basement, which was filled with abandoned equipment and boxes of decaying paperwork. There, I found a maintenance log from 1997, the year the building was renovated. One entry read: ‘Removed the thirteenth step on the fourth floor landing as per request. Structural integrity compromised. Recommend removal and replacement.’ There was a note scribbled in the margin: ‘Settled. This is why we don’t build with thirteen.’

The log went on to describe strange occurrences in the building, but the handwriting became increasingly erratic, and the last entry was a single sentence: ‘They’re still here.’

That night, I went back to the stairwell. I brought a flashlight, and I walked up to the fourth floor landing. The thirteenth step was back. It was exactly as I remembered, with the faded number 13, and it was slightly ajar. I pushed on it. It swung open, revealing a dark, narrow shaft. The air that rose up was cold and smelled of damp earth.

A voice echoed from below, a familiar voice. Camille’s. ‘I’m down here. Please help me.’

My heart pounded. I felt a overwhelming urge to go down, to find her. But something held me back. A primal instinct screamed at me to run. I slammed the step shut and fled down the stairs, not stopping until I burst out of the building into the cold night air.

I never went back to the McAllister Institute. I transferred to another university the following semester. But I couldn’t escape the memory of that thirteenth step, and what it might have led to. I often wonder if Camille is still down there, in that dark shaft, waiting for someone brave or foolish enough to follow her voice.

To this day, whenever I see a staircase, I count the steps. And I always, always make sure there are no more than twelve. Because I know, now, that the thirteenth step is not just a superstition. It’s a doorway. And once you open it, you can never truly close it again.