The Vanishing Stair

by Maureen Johnson

  “Sure,” Stevie said. Her voice sounded sleepy.

  “Sorry to disturb you. Go back to sleep.”

  Stevie closed her eyes again and let movies play out on the backs of her eyelids. She summoned the feeling again, of David’s kiss and touch. There was so little time to savor it. The memory would fade, the sensation would be corrupted by whatever was coming.

  This had all happened before. The same, but different.

  Pix returned and told her to pack some things in a bag. “Take your time,” she said, but her face betrayed her shock. “There’s an issue in the house and we’re sleeping somewhere else tonight.”

  Stevie got out of bed and began mechanically filling her backpack. Medicine, clothes, her computer and phone, everything shoved into the backpack until it squeaked a bit from the strain. She was about to close it when she had another thought. The tin. It would not fit. She pulled out a shirt that was taking up valuable space and put the tin in its place. Better safe than sorry.

  There was a security officer blocking the view to the end of the hall. Nate was sitting at the table in the common room, and Janelle, still dressed as Wonder Woman, was grabbing at things in her room and packing her own bag. Pix stood at the table, her expression grim.

  “Where’s David?” Stevie asked Pix.

  “He’s over at the Great House. He found Ellie, Stevie. In a tunnel. She . . . wasn’t okay. She died.” Pix waited for Stevie to absorb this.

  “Where are we going to go?” Nate asked.

  “We’re setting up for the night in the yurt. They’re going to bring in beds, and we’ll hang dividers from the ceiling. It’ll be nice and cozy. We can talk.”

  “Oh good,” Nate said, picking at the table surface with his fingernail.

  “As soon as Janelle is ready, we can go. I’m going to get my things.”

  “She must be tired of having her students die,” Nate said when Pix went upstairs. “Think of the paperwork.”

  When Stevie did not reply, Nate nudged her hand.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “How the hell is this happening? Didn’t we just do this? I thought she ran away, like she went off with circus people or something. Not that she was . . . under us.”

  “She wasn’t really under us,” Stevie said. “She was kind of far away.”

  “Oh, good.”

  “You know what I mean,” she said.

  “I know what you mean. I know that this place may suck. Two people are dead.”

  “It’s not the school’s fault.”

  “No, but . . . maybe? Maybe this place . . .”

  “Are you saying this place is, like, cursed or something?”

  Nate shook his head.

  “I’m saying, two people have died, and that’s a lot more than the number who died at my last school. I know shit happens. Terrible shit happens. But this is weird terrible shit with tunnels and dry ice and people suffocating to death underground . . .”

  Stevie pulled her shoulders closer into her body. Her mind drifted away. It went to David and his story of his mom and his sister, of the promises she had made, of the coldness of the case she wanted to solve and the coldness under the ground.

  Janelle emerged in a pair of fleece pajama bottoms and a massive fuzzy sweater, a silver overnight bag on her shoulder. She walked over to Nate and Stevie and dropped an arm around each. There were tears at the edges of her eyes.

  “Pix said Vi could come over to the yurt too, if that’s all right with you. I’d just really like to see them.”

  “Sure,” Stevie said. “Of course.”

  Nate nodded absently.

  “David found her. They took him over to the Great House.”

  The blue door creaked open and Larry came inside in his red-and-black fleece coat, his walkie-talkie buzzing on his hip. He surveyed the group at the table.

  “We’re going to take you over to the yurt now. We haven’t told the school at large yet. Some people are still at the party. I’d ask you, if you don’t mind, not to spread this. I know Vi Harper-Tomo has permission to come over. But please don’t text this to anyone.”

  “We won’t,” Janelle said.

  Larry’s focus landed on Stevie. He was reading her. She tried to shut herself, as loud and cleanly as shutting a book.

  But people aren’t books, unfortunately.

  The group made its way into the night, the two officers flanking them. The night was cold and still as glass, with only a sliver of a moon. Vi met them halfway, with the head of Juno House as an escort.

  “What’s going on?” they said. “Are you okay?”

  They looked at Janelle closely, then thumbed away the tears under her eyes.

  “We’ll talk over there,” Janelle said. “I’m okay. We just have to go.”

  Nate put on his headphones and lowered his head. He was checking out of the situation. Stevie wasn’t sure which one of them led this movement, but it seemed that she and Larry were at a different pace than the others, and a fractionally different trajectory, until they were on their own little path together. Either he wanted to talk to her or she subconsciously had to talk to him. Whatever the case, it was something she could not bear to hold in. As they passed the conference of statue heads, Stevie came to a stop. Larry nodded to the others to keep going. He leaned against one of the plinths and examined her.

  “You need to talk?” he said.

  “I was down there,” she replied.

  “I know.”

  He held up a fake mustache. It must have come off when she was making out with David. She had forgotten she had been wearing it.

  “What you need to do, right now, is tell me the truth.”

  Stevie dug into her pocket and pulled out the fragment of trash bag. She handed it to Larry.

  “I found this on the floor down there.”

  “What were you doing, Stevie?” he said. “I told you. No tunnels.”

  “Fenton—Dr. Fenton—thought there was a tunnel. I looked. I found it. It was homework, sort of. I didn’t know Ellie was there. I had no idea she was there. It was just a tunnel. I didn’t want to go in. But he went inside.”

  “David.”

  Stevie nodded.

  “I had to follow him. I thought he might . . . I don’t know.”

  “Did you find anything besides this, aside from . . . ?”

  Larry held up the fragment of garbage bag. Stevie shook her head.

  “There was . . . a smell.”

  “The first time you experience that, you never forget it. You can get used to it, to dealing with it, but it’s hard.”

  “Did she just get stuck down there?” Stevie asked. “When she left the Great House that night?”

  “That would be my guess,” Larry said. “We tracked up to the other end of the passage. We had no idea it was there. Goes to a hatch in the Great House basement floor that blends in with the other stones. She went in, something blocked her way out.”

  Stevie’s mind immediately went to the Edgar Allan Poe story, “The Cask of Amontillado,” about a murderer who lures his victim down to a vault, who is then shackled to the wall and bricked in. The horror of it was too much. Stevie inhaled the cool, clean air greedily. The smell was still there, molecules of it, clinging to the inside of her nose, her skin, her mind.

  “What do I do?” Stevie said. “Do you have to tell the police I was there?”

  Larry put his hand on his leg and tapped one finger. Then he inhaled deeply and let out a long sigh.

  “Nate?” he asked.

  “Nate didn’t go down,” Stevie said.

  “He’s not as stupid as the two of you.”

  “He told us not to go. He stayed at the top in case something happened.”

  “Definitely not as stupid,” Larry said. “All right. This is about finding and reporting an accident victim. Technically, it sounds like David was the one who found her. You can’t report something you didn’t see.” This was wro
ng, but Stevie made no correction. “If anything changes, then you step forward. You do it at once. You don’t go in any tunnel here ever again, for any reason. You follow every rule down to the letter.”

  “Thank you,” she said quietly.

  “Don’t thank me. This isn’t about thanks. It sounds like you tried to follow someone who was doing something stupid, even if that meant doing something stupid yourself. I know enough about David Eastman to know he would jump in without looking. He’ll be all right, no matter what happens. I think you know why.”

  Out of all the things that had happened, this was the one that made Stevie freeze.

  “You’ve met his father,” Larry said. It wasn’t a question.

  Stevie nodded.

  “And his father played a role in you coming back?”

  “He told you?” Stevie asked.

  “No one needed to tell me,” he said. “That wasn’t a tough one to work out. The sudden change of heart, your parents work for the man, the sudden flight back, the fact that there are no flights back at that time of night and that you probably wouldn’t fly anyway . . .”

  Stevie let out a loud exhale.

  “What did he give you?” Larry asked.

  “A ride.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “What did he want from you?”

  “Just . . . to be here. Because of David. I just wanted to come back.”

  She wasn’t sure if she was saying this to Larry or herself. Larry let out a low noise.

  “It’s not you,” he said. “Edward King is a son of a bitch and his son is a piece of work. . . .”

  She got the sense that there was a lot more he could have said, but unlike a suspect who starts talking and can’t stop, Larry shut the valve.

  “So Edward King gave you a chance to come back if you kept an eye on David. Now things become clearer.”

  “David doesn’t know,” she said.

  “Well, I’m not going to tell him that. This whole thing . . .”

  He shook his head and cut himself off again.

  “Could I see him, though?” she said. “He did just find his friend’s body.”

  Larry let out a long sigh.

  “He’s at the library,” he said. “They took him over there because there are too many people in the Great House. I’ll take you over, because of what happened tonight. But you need to remember, it’s not your job to protect David Eastman. I feel bad for the kid, I do. But it is not your job. Do you understand?”

  “I know.”

  “No,” he said, “I don’t think you do. Don’t follow someone into the dark, Stevie. I’ve seen it happen too many times.”

  Stevie wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but the general idea was clear enough.

  16

  THERE WAS A THICK, FECUND SMELL OF DROPPING LEAVES THAT NIGHT as Stevie and Larry made their way over to the library. Why was Ellingham always at its richest at times like this, heavy with the smell of earth and air, extreme in light and shade? Why did the Great House loom higher with its orange lit windows, where the party was wrapping up and the school still unaware that another of its company had been lost?

  What was the problem with this place? Maybe Nate had a point, she thought, her footsteps hard and clear on the path. It was called Mount Hatchet. Maybe that was a sign. Don’t go there. Don’t blow a chunk of the face of this place and build your empire.

  And don’t come looking for death and murder, Stevie, because you’ll find it.

  She was definitely not warm enough in her vinyl coat, even with the heavy Ellingham fleece underneath. Her jeans were too thin. She had no scarf, so the cold tickled the back of her neck.

  Ellie, wrapped in garbage bags, underground.

  She could still smell it.

  It. Her. It.

  A few people trickled out of the Great House, still in costume.

  Of course Ellie was dead.

  Of course she’d been found on Halloween. Sealed in a tunnel.

  It was distilled Ellingham, pure as one of the streams that ran down the mountain.

  It would have been dark for Ellie. Absolutely dark. She wouldn’t have known where she was. She would have had to feel along those walls, going back and forth, looking for a way out. How long? For hours? Days? Crying. Probably hyperventilating. Stevie thought of the depths of her own panic—the world-ending feeling of nothing. Ellie would have panicked. She would have gone back and forth and back and forth and screamed. Banged. Scratched and clawed. The thirst and the hunger and the confusion would have set in. . . .

  No. She had to keep these thoughts out. Paint over them with gloss and let them harden. She had a job to do now: find David, who had found Ellie.

  The Ellingham library was quietly buzzing. Several security officers were there, talking to the local police. There were no police cars parked out on the oval—they must have taken the service road and parked out back to keep people from freaking out. Despite the activity, the library felt like an empty cathedral. It had that strange architectural property of trapping any wind that came in through the door and spinning it up in a soft vortex that had nowhere to go. The higher you went, air whistled through the elaborate wrought iron of the circular steps and balcony guards, and loose pages trembled, as if alive. The noise of the conversations below swirled all the way to the ceiling, smashing against the books. Stevie looked straight up, noticing for the first time the constellations painted on the blue ceiling. The stars were inside, closer.

  Larry had a quiet word with one of the security people.

  “He’s upstairs in one of the reading rooms,” he said to Stevie. “With a counselor. Let me see what’s going on.”

  Stevie watched Larry wend his way up to the second floor and disappear into the stacks. He reappeared on the balcony a few minutes later and waved Stevie up. The iron rail of the staircase was cold, and each of her footsteps reverberated as she climbed. It seemed like the library didn’t like this interruption of its peaceful routine.

  “You can go and talk to him,” Larry said in a low voice. “The counselor said that would be helpful for both of you. But you remember what I said.”

  He guided her to the end of a wide aisle between the geography and geology sections, a row of green-spined books that concluded in one of the library’s somber wooden doors with the gold painted lettering. The counselor was waiting by the door. Stevie recognized her from before, when Hayes died and Ellingham deployed therapists in all directions.

  The reading room was a small spot, separated from the rest of the second floor by walls that were half-paneled in frosted glass. The original furnishings had been replaced with a gray love seat and four fuzzy beanbags and an equally fuzzy rug, just in case any of the other six hundred cozy reading nooks at Ellingham didn’t satisfy.

  David had avoided all of these options and was sitting on the floor against the wall, once again wearing the two-thousand-dollar coat. His knees were partially bent and he was staring at his shoes. The counselor was hovering next to him on the arm of the love seat. She got up and came over to speak to Larry and Stevie in the doorway.

  “Would you like to come in?” she said to Stevie, in that professionally calm way that therapists have.

  Stevie stepped into the room cautiously, and David looked up. He was pale, his face all raw edges.

  “Hey,” Stevie said.

  “Hey.”

  There was a dry crackle in his voice, but otherwise, nothing gave a hint about what had just happened.

  The counselor backed out and shut the door quietly. Stevie found that she did not quite know what to do with herself. Her arms felt gangly and useless at her sides. She wasn’t sure if she did want to sit, but standing was getting weird. She considered perching on the arm of the love seat as the counselor had, but that was strange and clinical.

  After an awkward moment, she slipped down the wall and sat next to him. There was warmth radiating off his body. The room felt humid. Cons
idering all that had transpired between them that night, there was no reason to be uncomfortable. And yet, Stevie felt twitchy in her skin.

  “They’re setting up a place for us to stay in the yurt tonight,” she said.

  “Like camp,” he said. “Sadness camp.”

  He clenched and unclenched his hand several times on his knee, then suddenly reached for Stevie’s and held it.

  “Okay,” he said, coughing out a humorless laugh. “You told me not to go down there. I should have listened to you. If you say not to sneak in somewhere . . .”

  Stevie could only concentrate on the feeling in her hand, the warmth of his palm against her skin, the message it conveyed. It was a need. A need for her strength. The sensation rippled up her arm and was transmitted to the rest of her body in a wave.

  “She knew,” David said. “About me. She was the only one before you.”

  “About your dad?” Stevie asked.

  “We were a little drunk. I told her. I didn’t think she’d judge me for it. I remember we were sitting in the attic of the art barn. She was making a collage and she had a bottle of some German stuff that tasted like cough syrup and ass. When I told her . . . she laughed. She said it didn’t matter. She could have told people. I know she never did.”

  David’s voice was thickening. Stevie stared at the floor, the original tiles, with their scars and dings of decades of students scouring the aisles. There was a storm brewing, something that felt like falling and spinning. She wanted squirrels to come flooding toward them. She was about to ask David how he had managed to get all those squirrels, when he began to sob.

  She had absolutely no idea what to do.

  Well, she did. The thing to do was to put an arm around him. Kissing him had been easy. This was pure and intimate and happening not in the dark of the tunnel, but here in the dim light, in full view of the books.

  She began to sweat. She felt the swirl in her brain, the speed of life. Her promise to Edward King mocked her now. Befriend him. Take care of him. Make him stay. Make a mockery of every feeling she had about him to get what she wanted and needed so badly. She could no longer figure out if she had done those things with David because she wanted to or because it was all part of the deal, the miserable, evil deal. Edward King had made her into a liar. He had turned her into someone like him and everything that had happened tonight was tainted. If she touched David now, she would be complicit.