The Last Step

The next footprint appeared halfway up the stairs.

Bram watched the dust press down into the shape of a heel, then a sole. No body followed it. The stair creaked anyway.

Hettie backed onto the second-floor landing, keeping her eyes on the dark below. “Can it come all the way up?”

“I don’t know.” Bram tightened his grip on the pry bar. Its hooked end had left a pale gouge in the wall where he’d swung it to clear the doorway downstairs. “Keep back from the stair edge.”

Another tread complained. The fresh print appeared on the next step.

The landing was narrow, boxed in by a plaster wall on one side and a waist-high railing on the other. Bram had no door to shut between them and the stairs. The rail was sound, the steps solid. He saw no obvious defect in either one.

Then he saw the landing boards.

They ran across the stair opening, their ends hidden beneath the base of the railing. A dark line marked the joint between the bottom step and the first board. A completed seam. A neat, load-bearing connection.

Bram’s fingers shifted on the pry bar.

Hettie followed his glance. “You can’t leave it whole.”

“I can open it.”

The distinction mattered to him. He didn’t know why. He only knew what had happened when a piece of wood bridged the gap downstairs: the figure had put its foot across. He could try making the opposite condition here. A break in the path.

The stair creaked again. The print on the next step was deep enough to make dust climb at its edges.

Bram jammed the pry bar under the landing board nearest the stair mouth. The board barely moved. The nail heads sat beneath old paint, and the railing pinned the far edge. He leaned on the bar. Wood groaned against wood.

“Other end,” he said.

Hettie crouched beside him. She put both hands against the board, away from the metal hook. “Tell me when.”

The tread below them gave a blunt knock. The sound traveled through Bram’s boot soles.

“Now.”

He pulled. Hettie lifted. The board rose a fraction, then snapped down and struck the pry bar. The impact jarred Bram’s wrist. He bit back a curse and changed the angle, forcing the hook deeper into the seam.

A footprint appeared on the next-to-last step.

Hettie’s hands faltered. Bram saw the gray-white dust on her knuckles, the old scar crossing one thumb. Her gaze had gone to the stair below, where the print sat as plainly as a mark pressed into wet clay.