#halfway up the stairs

over on patreon Space Bat asked for: ‘the weight of nothing behind you when walking up the stairs’ and that got me thinking up some micro horror stories.

enjoy this itty bitty spooky anthology.

Halfway up the stairs you hear a crash in the kitchen. “Everything is fine!” your sister calls out as you rub your temple and sigh, “I managed to save the ice cream! I’ll be right behind you”. You have big doubts that everything is actually fine considering her track record with basic motor functions, but you figure you can both clean up the mess sometime before your parents get home. Despite your dramatics her clumsiness doesn’t really bother you. What does bother you is the fact that a step later you can hear her right behind you, just like she said she’d be, chatting away. Because between the fact that you never heard the creak of extra footsteps and the fact that there’s no way she made it to you that fast, her being there should be impossible.

You stop and grip the railing as every creepypasta you read in middle school flashes before your eyes.

“Are you sure everything is okay? Are you okay?” you ask.

“Um, of course I am?” she replies, “I caught those bowls like a ninja when I slipped! And…oh. Oh no. I slipped.”

The empty space behind you goes quiet, and when you finally get the courage to turn around you run to the kitchen with an instinctual urgency.

You find her body crumpled on the floor, a bowl of ice cream perfectly upright in each hand. The blood on the corner of the counter matches the growing pool underneath her head, and as you frantically call 911 you swear you hear the softest saddest laugh in the empty space behind you.

“I told you I caught them,” She whispers.

Halfway up the stairs you accept that no one is going to help you. Your family just watches God drag you into the attic like they watched your mother and you great aunt and your big sister. Ever since you were little you were told that they deserved it, that it was a punishment for great hidden sins that you just didn’t notice because you were too young and innocent. So there had to have been a mistake for them to pull you, pure and obedient you, out of bed to be marked, right?

Right?

Your father silently refuses to look you in the eye while you call for proof of your heresy and his cowardice makes you angrier than you’ve ever been in your entire life. So angry that you twist until you can get God’s wrist between your teeth and bite down until you can feel bone.

You choke on blue-black blood as your house fills with screams and every light in the neighborhood goes out.

Halfway up the stairs the lighthouse goes dark. The warm afternoon light streaming in through the windows is replaced by inky blackness as the water rushes in, thundering against the walls until it finally rises enough to settle one stair below you. There is no sloshing, no lapping of waves from the intruding sea as you turn to stare down into the grave-still void. There is only fear and tension and two tiny pin pricks of light that could be eyes far beneath the water’s surface. As you grip the railing for dear life a voice that sounds like ship hulls being ripped open burbles up from the depths and sprays a fine mist of ice cold salt water into the air.

“Last Chance.” The voice says.

It always says that. Every day for the past three days.

There is an urge inside you to walk down to the lights. An urge to sink, if only out of exhaustion over this new grim routine. Instead, you turn your back on the water and start to climb again. The light returns a little bit before you reach the top of the stairs and it makes you bold enough to look down. Nice and dry, just like always. Nice and normal.

Yup, if it weren’t for the thousands of scratch marks in the stone walls half way down that make you think of a great furious beast sharpening its claws, you could convince yourself that there’d never been anything there at all.

Halfway up the stairs the dude from the club grabs at your ass for the 4th time in 5 minutes and your flirty giggle fills the nearly empty stairwell. You said that the elevator in your apartment building was broken and in his haste he didn’t bother to check. They never do. You hop over the step with the tooth embedded in the concrete but he is too drunk to notice. They never do. Seconds later there are screams behind you as the walls open their jaws and he fights to escape the grasp of the hungry thing made of brick and meat that ignores you as you continue up. There is nothing behind you when you reach the second floor and open the door to your hall. There never is.

Another year of rent paid.

Halfway up the stairs you realize that Daisy isn’t following you. You look down to see her sitting with one shaky paw on the bottom step, the grey around her muzzle catching the moonlight as she looks up at you and whines. Without a word you go back down and scoop your old friend into your arms. It is the first time you have to carry her up the stairs. You do not know it yet, but you only have a month and a half left together.