Short Fiction: "Upon the Stair"

Previously published in the anthology “Secret Stairs.”

Another short, and more backstory. Readers of the Paxton Locke books should recognize Mike Doyle and Tayla from their appearance in A Vital Breath. What can I say? I wrote this as a one-off, and when Pax needed guidance in the multiverse, Mike and Tayla came to mind.

The woods seemed as good a place as any to die.

If Mike Doyle had lived under any credo up until this point, it had been his desire to never be a burden on others. At this point that trait was a relic of his childhood, but he planned to leave life much as he’d passed through it – honest and on his own terms.

The handwritten note reflected that - short and to the point. He folded the single page neatly and laid it on the passenger seat on top of the keys. He planned on locking the doors, but he assumed that the park rangers would gain entry somehow. The security was more to keep curious onlookers and would-be joyriders out. The downward spiral his life had taken wasn’t the bank’s fault. He figured that it would be easier for them to recoup the loan on his vehicle if the only damage to it was a broken window.

He considered the wedding ring on his finger and debated whether to leave it behind. He’d worn it on his hand for so long that taking it off would only have revealed the band of pale, indented skin on his finger. Relationships, it seemed, were more easily discarded than the physical signs of their presence.

In the end, he kept the ring. There was little cell service in the deep woods, so he left the phone, along with its rage-inducing chain of text messages.

Just after noon, Mike Doyle walked onto the hiking trail that led into the deep woods of the Hoosier National Forest. He carried a canteen on a sling over one shoulder, a Ruger GP100 in a paddle holster on his belt, and the soul-crushing burden of a broken life.

On the cusp of fall, the leaves hadn’t yet turned. At that time of the year, the park was jam-packed with visitors, jostling for a view of the harvest-themed kaleidoscope. The crushing heat and humidity of July and August had moved on, and while Mike didn’t have as much company as he would have later in the year, he was far from alone.

Being honest, it didn’t matter. He didn’t plan to end things right on the main hiking trail. All in all, that seemed rather uncouth.

It did take a bit of patience, though. He settled onto a moss-covered boulder at a bend in the trail and opened his canteen. With no need to save it for a return trip, he could drink deeply and freely. The water was still cold enough to make his teeth ache, and he reveled in the sensation.

How many people, I wonder, can step to the end of their life like this, knowing that this is the last rock they will sit on, that this is the last cold drink they will enjoy?

In a way, the feeling was cathartic, and he smiled and nodded at a pair of passing hikers.

Witness statement, Angela Lucas: “It was weird, you know? He looked like he didn’t have a care in the world. If I hadn’t seen his face on TV, I never would have thought he was going to do . . . that. Have you found him yet?”

When the trail was clear in both directions, Mike climbed off of the rock and left the path. The particular route he’d chosen for his last hike made a loop around the upper rim of a small valley, before dipping down and back up to intersect the trailhead. His new route would take him up over the lip, then down into the opposite valley. The foliage was thick enough that the undergrowth was sparse and stunted, and he didn’t want anyone to spot him.

Despite the urgency, he picked his way through the trees with a relaxed pace. There were no cries from behind as he reached the descent, and he moved down into the valley while occasionally glancing at the position of the sun. He’d studied the map of the park carefully before leaving his truck. If he headed generally westward, he’d avoid the various loops of the official hiking trails and end up, after a time, smack-dab in the middle of nothing.

Seems appropriate enough.

He was starting to sweat, and Mike stopped for another moment to take a swig from his canteen and relax in the shade of a tree. He leaned his head against the bark and eyed the branches overhead. He’d always enjoyed camping and hiking, but he’d never taken the time to learn what sort of tree was what. As such the identity of his current companion remained a mystery.

“I am,” he informed the tree, “fully aware of what poison ivy and oak look like. So at least there’s that.” Mike wiped the drying sweat from his brow with one hand. “Guessing you’ve been here longer than I have, my friend.”

The tree made no comment, though there seemed to Mike to be a bit of a shrug in the waving of its leaf-laden limbs in the breeze.

He pulled himself to his feet. “Good talk.”

Mike glanced at the sky, oriented himself on the sun, and resumed his trek. The trees were more spread out the further he went, and his boots whisked through grass and ferns now as he tried to keep to as straight a path as possible. The ground began to rise, forcing him to go to his hands and knees to maintain balance. There’d been no helpful rangers here to hack a trail out of the wilderness, or to lay stone and timber to provide for traction. If not for the occasional bit of sun-faded trash, Mike could almost believe that he was the first person to pass this way in decades.

After slipping back every third step, he finally topped the crest. The sudden sun blinded him for a moment, and he turned his head and blinked to clear his vision. When he looked back, he kept a hand to his forehead and wondered whether it was silly to wish he’d brought sunglasses. That thought dissipated as the vista ahead came into view.

This elevated portion of the forest was a simple, flat plain of grass, stretching a good hundred yards to the next valley. The other peaks –it seemed nonsensical to call them mountains – tended toward the narrow, but this one was broad and flat, and carpeted in rippling knee-length grass. It might have been natural, but the sole terrain feature rising above the grass drew his eyes and made him wonder if the plateau wasn’t man-made.

The staircase was narrow, formed from smooth river stones mortared together with rough cement. It must have been ancient, for Mike could detect no signs of a foundation or other signs of a cabin. Despite that evidence, the mortar struck him as fresh and free of weathering.

Before he realized that he’d made the conscious decision to move, he found himself halfway to the stair. He pulled up short and forced himself to alter his path to make an exploratory circle around the construction.

The base of the staircase was solid, though there was a hollow on one side that he supposed might have been handy for storage. Firewood, perhaps? All the way around various pieces of stone made up the entire construction. He marveled at the effort it must have taken to haul them up here.

“Mules, maybe,” he muttered to himself. “Either that or there’s a gentler path on the other side.” It would have been easier to frame the staircase with timbers, but he was hardly one to make that point – the staircase, like the tree in the valley below, had been here for far longer than he had.

And will be, after.

Mike licked his lips and considered the staircase. The top step was a bit broader than the overall width, and he thought that if he turned sideways, he could sit up there. Should be a nice view.

He sloshed the canteen thoughtfully and nodded to himself.

As he neared the staircase, the hairs on the backs of his arms stood on end. Mike considered the effect and marveled at the feel of the air on his skin. The atmosphere around the staircase felt electric and wild, as though the skies above were ready to break open into a thunderstorm. He glanced up, but no storm clouds marred the day.

He put a foot on the first step and pressed down lightly. He was suicidal, not stupid. The last thing I want is to have the whole mess crumble under me. Leave me with a broken neck, unable to do anything but wait to die.

Mike paused. For a moment, the possibility was not just a thought, but something more akin to a vision – he felt helplessness, the loss of hope, and the incurable thirst of a man held captive within his own immobile body. Despite the warmth of the sun above and the brightness of the day, he was at once cold, shrouded in darkness, and he heard the shuffle of paws through the grass. Coyotes.

Mike snapped back into himself and shuddered at the sense of cold. Despite the warmth of the day, his skin broke out in gooseflesh. For a moment, he had an incredible sense of thirst, but that passed just as quickly as the chill.

He squinted at the sun. “What the hell was that?”

The sky was as forthcoming as the tree had been, and he snorted and shook his head. Daydreams, melancholy, call it what you will. Maybe it was his subconscious mind’s way of fighting against the decision that his logical side had come to.

He took another step and waited. If someone had come along he supposed they’d have found his appearance ridiculous – standing at the bottom of a staircase to nowhere, head cocked as though anticipating some great revelation.

Mike took another step, and then another, pausing after each. At this point, he was just below the halfway mark, and he shook his head at his own hesitation and took the next two steps at once.

The sky turned gray.

He flinched and stared up at foreign heavens.

What he was seeing was impossible – in the span of two steps, it had gone from early afternoon to just after sundown. The fiery red glow on the horizon lent bloody streaks to the darkening sky, and he scrubbed at his eyes to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing.

Mike stepped down.

Daytime.

He’d been expecting the shift, but his hands started shaking all the same. The sun was back, a bit over the midday zenith. Clear blue sky, light breeze. He laughed, though it sounded high and a little out of control in his ears. “Last night I saw upon the stair, a little man who wasn’t there.”

Step up.

Darkness.

“What the-“ he began, but a loud crack off to his left whipped his head around, and he pressed himself to the cool river rocks as though seeking a place to hide. The desire struck him as nonsensical at first, but then he listened to his body and realized that the hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end. The monster was in his closet – the saber-tooth stood before the cave. His lizard brain knew the truth even if his rational mind wasn’t ready to accept it just yet.

The flat area on top of the crest had changed. The staircase now supported the charred remains of a cabin, though there was still no roof. Through gaps burnt into the walls, he saw the withered stumps of trees and blackened grass.

Thick layers of ash coated everything in sight.

A low growl came from outside, and something low and fast flashed across one of the openings in the walls. Mike held back the urge to scream. Instead, he pulled the Ruger out of his paddle holster and pulled the hammer back. There was another growl at the click-click of the mechanism, and he cursed his own stupidity.

At once, a great mass slammed into the wall across from the staircase, and the scorched timbers creaked and cracked. In the twilight, Mike could make out a low, sloped forehead that seemed to hold too many eyes, and a mouth full of inward-curving teeth. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to have any hair, and even though it moved through the ash-soaked land surrounding Mike, its skin was shiny and black.

He caught another glimpse of black through another hole. Mike stabbed the revolver out without thinking, pulling the trigger as soon as the sights lined up. The .357 Magnum roared, and the creature outside roared in response.

An even greater blow struck the wall outside, and timbers shifted and creaked. Noise at his back drew Mike’s attention, and he leaped to the packed dirt floor of the cabin as one of the wall timbers collapsed and rolled off of the staircase behind him.

He’d just avoided a crushing blow from the falling beam, but that wasn’t what drew his eye. The staircase, if anything, was even narrower than it had been before, and the mortar had begun to take on a patchy, leprous appearance. Had it changed, like the world around him? Outside the beast roared again, slamming into the wall.

If the staircase collapsed or God forbid disappeared, would he be stuck here?

“No,” he whispered. “Not like this.”

He took the steps two at a time, keeping his head down and focused on the stairs themselves. For a moment, he thought that whatever effect that had brought him here might have ended, but his luck held. The world flickered around him, from night to day and back again. Snow, rain, and blistering sun alternately froze and seared him. After a moment, he wondered if he’d lost his mind at the base of the stairs because there seemed to be no end in sight. There’d been a dozen steps if that – how was it that he continued to climb?

And, just like that, he reached the top of the stairs and leaped into a light so pure and bright it left him momentarily blind. Such was his shock at the sudden brightness that he barely felt his fall to the ground. It, thankfully, felt more akin to falling from the original height of the staircase than the infinite heights that the burning muscles of his legs proclaimed that he’d traveled.

Mike rolled onto his back and blinked until his eyes returned to focus. When he’d first stepped onto the staircase, the grassy crest had been bereft of trees. Now, trees that looked somehow wrong in a way he couldn’t quite put his finger on towered overhead, shading the clearing with broad, fan-like branches.

Oh. That’s it – they’re like giant ferns, aren’t they?

He sat up and rubbed watery eyes. The clearing was roughly circular and clear of any of the fern trees. Thick-bladed grass carpeted the floor, and he was startled – though not entirely surprised – to see that there was no staircase. Whatever eldritch power had brought him to this place was done with him, it seemed.

“Greetings, Traveler.”

Mike turned in the direction of the voice and watched as the woman that owned it stepped into the clearing. He almost had to rub his eyes again to make sure that he was truly seeing what they told him, but he resisted the urge.

Maybe this was the hallucination of a mind slowly shutting down from a self-inflicted gunshot, and maybe this was real. His gut told him it was real, and he didn’t think it was possible to bruise your tailbone in a hallucination.

The woman was tall, perhaps a few inches short of his own six feet, and athletically built. She wore tight-fitting clothing of a tan fabric that Mike thought might be deer skins, though he forced himself to look away to avoid giving offense. She carried a long spear, and leather thongs lashed a wickedly sharp-looking crystalline spearhead to the shaft.

As Mike studied the woman’s face, he couldn’t help his reaction. His jaw dropped.

It wasn’t her appearance – she had high, delicate cheekbones, full lips, and eyes that seemed to glitter in amusement at his silent study. She’d drawn her brownish-blonde hair into braids on the side of her head, and secured them together at the nape of her neck by some means that he couldn’t immediately see.

No, Mike’s shock wasn’t due to her beauty. The delicate tips of her ears, each of which drew to a point that ended just above the crown of her head, were the sole source of his astonishment.

“Are my words foreign to you, Traveler?” She cocked her head, as though assessing his condition. “Are you well?”

Mike forced himself to speak. “Yeah, uh, yes. I mean no. I understand you. And I’m okay, I think. I fell from the top of the stairs.” He raised a hand to indicate the staircase, then remembered that it was gone. “They were there, I promise.”

The woman touched the fingers of her free hand to her lips. “I know you speak true, Traveler. The wise folk of my people saw the portents of your arrival, and sent me to greet you.” She grinned suddenly, and despite the seriousness of her words, Mike detected an undercurrent of joy that ran through her. “Welcome!”

“Umm, thanks?” Mike shook his head. Less than an hour ago, he’d been ready to end his own life. Now he was – somewhere else, and all the insurmountable problems of his old life didn’t seem to matter, all that much. Hopefully, they don’t have divorce lawyers here. Where ever here is. Make that lawyers in general. He huffed a chuckle.

At once, there was a strange ululating cry that seemed to echo around the clearing. It sounded different from the beast that Mike had fled on the ash world, but the same uncomfortable feeling ran through him. Whatever had made that sound, he didn’t think that he wanted to meet it anytime soon.

“Do you wish to die this day, Traveler?” The woman with the pointed ears gave him a look of such soul-searching intensity that it took his breath away. “Speak quickly. There are other creatures in these woods, and none are as welcoming as my people.”

Elf, Mike. She’s an elf.

The answer surprised him, though he supposed it shouldn’t have. “No. No, I don’t.”

“Then away we must – if, of course, you will grant me the honor of being your guide, Traveler.”

He considered the offer, then with a shrug, replied, “Call me Mike.”