On the staircase in a house there is a step you walk over going up and down. But if you stop on it, if you truly stand still and linger, a different world will take you. This is the story of the fourteenth step.
Henning Clark looked out the window, peering past heavy rain and low clouds to the endless puddles on the road that ran away from his circumstances. He knew his mind and body needed sleep and deep rest, well … mostly rest from the constant overthinking about everything. The mind is not your friend, he thought. His mind had spun so long around what could go wrong that a mountain of anxiety had risen in his soul, sitting on his chest and keeping a high-strung tension in his breathing and even in his eyes, every second of every day. Living alone in the old family house didn’t help. He missed his parents and his sister, whom God had taken far too soon.
He started up the stairs to his bedroom, heavy steps matching heavy thoughts. On the fourteenth step he stopped and sighed. Something felt off. The hairs on his neck rose. A tingling ran over his skin, strongest in his fingertips. What the hell is happening? He glanced around for a ghost. As a child he had seen ghosts in this house. They never tried to harm him or anyone, but now there was nothing: no ghost, no open window, nothing. He was alone. Henning paused and listened. He could hear a slight wind and could smell grass. His vision got blurry or was it the things around him getting out of focus. He didn’t know.
He slowly found himself outside the house somehow, as if he was floating in midair. Everything lay in a haze with a little light from above. He told himself he must have fainted on the stairs and would regain consciousness in a minute. He waited. No change. Am I dead, he thought to himself? He didn’t feel dead, but how would he know? How does dead feel, you stupid bastard? he thought. Annoyance flared. He moved his hands, shouting the first verse of The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe.
The haze began to lift. Shapes formed. The outlines of an underground cave opening up in a hill, that led up to the surface. A chill touched his skin. He realized he was moving forward, drifting as though on a slow breeze. He focused on moving and with effort, managed to guide himself ahead by will alone. After a while he learned to turn, to rise, and to sink again. Once steadied, he began to study his surroundings, looking for landmarks. Below and around the cave mouth people lived and worked. They tended horses in the cave and kept some cattle. Their clothes looked medieval as he recognized from history books. He drifted closer. Up close he could see their faces and hands, but they did not seem to notice him. A small child, though, looked straight at him and pointed in awe. The horses, too, grew uneasy when his path came near, shying and rolling their eyes. Henning rose from the cave mouth and saw the cave was one of several along a vast ravine. Above lay fields of green, rich and fertile, with many people working them. Where the hell am I? I can’t be dead, there’s no one I know here. They don’t see me, but children and animals do. Maybe I am dead and my soul’s in some afterlife.
The world blurred again. His sight dimmed, the scene fading into gray mist. A different smell reached him now: the closed-in scent of dust and wood instead of grass and earth. His left hand gripped something. He looked. The stair rail. He looked down and saw he was standing on his staircase, on the fourteenth step. He stepped off quickly and went down to the first floor. What the hell. He’d heard the old stories about this house, tales of strange things that happened long ago, and he’d dismissed them as old-time nonsense. Not anymore. That fourteenth step was something else. If you lingered on it long enough, it sent you somewhere far away. He knew what it looked like now, though not where it was—or when.
But Henning knew one thing: he would try to return again. And next time, he would try for an expedition further inside.
A.G. Munson
