The Stairs in the Woods

Chapter 13-Now

I wake up to thin sheets, blinking lights, and needles tugging under my skin.

Something's beeping. Everything is a bone-chilling sterile white. I sit up slowly, muscles aching and head pounding. My whole body hurts. My tongue feels like leather, and my mouth is so dry you could strike a match against it. It's easy to recognize that somehow, I've ended up in the hospital, but I can't quite remember how.

Snippets of memory float around my mind. I went into the woods. I looked for Alice. I found the stairs. I was approached by that—that thing.

And then I woke up here.

But that's not quite right. That can't be right. The soles of my feet sting with a vengeance and I'm clearly dehydrated and hunger rakes at my stomach, so something else has to have happened.

A nurse drifts into my little room, clipboard in hand, and catches my eye. "Oh, you're up!" He says with an easy grin. "I'm glad. I'm Nurse Jacobs. How you feeling?"

He walks towards me and reaches for the cup of ice chips on my bedside table and holds it out to me. I accept it gladly.

"What happened?" I ask once I've stopped shovelling ice chips into my mouth.

The nurse raises an eyebrow. "I'd been hoping you could tell us that," he replies. "From what it says here, you were picked up in the middle of the woods, like miles in. You'd been missing for three days. They found you severely dehydrated, covered in dirt, blood, and scrapes, and with infected cuts on the soles of your feet. It's a miracle you made it out."

My head spins, and the world seems like it's tilting for a moment. That can't be—that can't be true, can it? Three days. There's no way I was out there for that long. I went into the woods. I found the stairs. And then—

And then.

"Where's my..." My GPS. My phone. My—I reach up and touch the bridge of my nose. My glasses. "Where's my stuff?"

Nurse Jacobs shrugs. "All you had with you were your clothes, and we had to cut those off you. Seriously, what were you doing in there?"

I bristle. "Looking for someone. What's in those?" I ask, pointing at the tubes running into me.

"Fluids for the dehydration, antibiotics for the cuts in your feet. You really did get lucky."

A shiver runs down my spine. So the woods held me, had me. I think they could've kept me forever, if they wanted to. I walked right in, and I was so close.

I watch numbly as Nurse Jacobs swaps out the little bags of saline hooked up to the IV. I could've died. I could've met a fate worse than death. I try to remember what happened, but all that comes to mind is a detached gray emptiness.

Once he's done messing with the IV, the nurse heads out. There are a few magazines within reach, but I don't have my glasses, and I don't really feel like straining to read them. So I stare up at the ceiling, struggling to gather my memories and slipping in and out of sleep.

My recollection is disturbed after a few hours when I hear voices outside my door. A couple moments later another nurse opens the door, and Aja walks in.

"Go easy on her!" The nurse calls with a laugh.

Aja nods and smiles sweetly, but the second the nurse leaves, the smile drops from her face. Aja rushes towards me, brown eyes furious.

I sit up weakly, feeling my heart sink.

"What the fuck were you thinking?" Aja hisses, gripping the side of my bed. She shakes her head. "Julia, how could you—why would you—I thought you were—I was the one who found you, remember that? How stupid could you be? You almost died."

I do remember that, distantly. The strong arms. The familiar voice. That was Aja.

"What happened to me?" I ask quietly.

She shakes her head disbelievingly. "Hell if I know. You looked a mess when we found you. What the hell were you doing out there? Your car was like fifty miles away. How'd you even manage that? And you weren't even close to the spot with the staircase. You didn't have a GPS or anything—we found it so far away from you. It's like you were wiped off the face of the earth."

I can't help but shudder. Those are the exact words they used for Alice: wiped off the face of the earth.

"I'm sorry," I mumble. A headache flares up as I remember that thing, that monster, the twisted amalgam of flesh and muscle and shadow that stalked me. "I... I got lost. Must've dropped the GPS somewhere. But I'm fine now!"

"You're in the hospital, Julia," Aja snaps. She sucks in a deep breath. "And Stella's livid.I've never seen her this upset. When you get out of the hospital, I don't think you're going to have a job anymore."

My breath catches. "No. You're—you're not serious."

"You broke like every rule we have. You were so incredibly stupid, you're lucky to be alive." She narrows her eyes at me. "You're done with this now, right? Please tell me you can let this go." Aja's expression softens. "Get help or something. This isn't healthy. God, Jules, you're tearing yourself apart."

Each word sinks into me like a blade. On some level, Aja is right. I'm running myself ragged. And if I really don't have a job...

But I can't focus on that right now. What I can focus on is what I saw. What happened. That monster was unnatural. And it turned up right near Alice's stairs. Which means I've got actual, solid proof that supernatural forces were at play with Alice's disappearance. Monsters are real, and lurking in the woods, near the stairs, near where she went missing. I can find her. I have to find her.

"Get out," I tell Aja, voice barely able to get above a whisper.

She frowns, unimpressed. "What?"

"Get out," I repeat. I need to figure this out. I need to find her. "I—I have enough to deal with right now without you scolding me, okay? I can't do this." The anger flashes off the tip of my tongue, biting with a vengeance. "So get out."

Aja's mouth falls open. She looks like she has a lot to say to me, but what she says eventually, with an eye roll and a cold voice, is, "Fine. We'll talk when you're in control."

I watch her close the door behind her as she leaves.

It's fine. This is fine. I don't need her, and I don't need my job. I'm finding her. I'm finding Alice, as soon as I'm out of this goddamned hospital bed.

Looking for Alice is eerily like falling in love with her.

Once I've started, I think I'd die if I tried to stop.