Esther Jung Takes on the World

Mystery: The Endless Staircase

Juniper is the queen of punks, from the sixties to the twenty-twenties. Now, in her early nineties, she sits on a chair turned backward, a streak of blue glittering in her snow-white braid. "Ladies, this day has been a long time coming. Today I hand the club over to a new housemother."

We're gathered in the back of her club on overturned plastic buckets. My heart is in my throat. I'm at the club every night, and I've been Juniper's errand girl for months. Everyone knows I'm a shoo-in. There's a nest of dark eyes watching me, hushed whispers echoing my name. I will be a good housemother, at least. I hear that and smile.

The door swings open, flooding the dank backroom with light. I turn my head and hide a snort. There stands a blonde woman, slender and tall, her hair coiffed like a forties dame and accented by her tilted fedora. She wears gray slacks and a stark blouse with opal buttons. There's a cigarette held in her pearly teeth.

"Did you get lost, madam?" I ask, and the girls laugh.

Juniper clears her throat. "This is Samantha, my granddaughter. She will be the new housemother."

"What!" It tears out of me as the room fills with gasps and uncomfortable murmuring. I stand up. "No, offense, but her?"

'Samantha' flips open her lighter and lights her chewed-up cigarette, offering me a polite smile.

"Don't be offended, Esther," Juniper crones. "Samantha has the qualities of a good housemother."

"No way she has more than I do!" My voice shakes.  My place has been usurped by a Columbo cosplayer. Nuh-uh. "I challenge her! There has to be a way to prove that I'd be a better housemother. I mean, I've never even seen this Samantha before."

Juniper's eyes dance. "Are you sure? What if it's a dangerous challenge?"

"It's just Sammy," the dame offers. "And I'll take up any challenge."

"Come here, then." Juniper stands up, leaning on her walking stick. She opens the door, and outside, directly behind the club, is a small shabby outhouse, entirely out of place in the gravel and sparse grass. It's always been forbidden. "Are either of you afraid of falling?"

"No!" 

Juniper smiles. "Use your artist's eye to find the right crate and your logic to ward off the static.  These holes in reality hold the most wonderous treasures, and I assure you, you'll know the emblem when you see it."

"Uh, Gram?"

Juniper whispers an incantation—she lived through the sixties, so she's well-versed in hippie-dippie magic. She opens the outhouse door and motions for us to follow.

I lean my head inside. Cold emanates from a space that can't be bigger than 10 x 10. But it's giant. Below us, a massive spiraling staircase, at least one hundred feet across. And darkness. Juniper has shown bits of magic here and there, but nothing like this. It's Lovecraftian. Me looking into Abyss, and Abyss looking into me.

Sammy's icy blue eyes are intent. "We don't have to do this, you know. Just let me be housemother."

"As if!" My breath quivers, but I turn my phone flashlight on, and we begin our descent. Sammy only uses the light of her cigarette. Smoke creeps up behind me, a smell like burning Sweet & Low. I hate it, hate her.

Down. Down.

Each step gets a little chillier. Sammy is silent. Something is pressing into my brain, making each thought. break.

down.

tiny fractals. 

each stair a fang.

my brain, pieces. who am I? a shadow sweeping over an endless staircase, circle upon circle upon circle upon...

"ESTHER!" A void opens up underneath my feet, but I don't fall. I'm pressed against a chest, tiny buttons digging into my spine. Empty, underneath me. Empty-empty-empty. Breath, fast and hot, tickles the back of my neck. "You idiot! Answer this: what's 164 + 278?"

Four and eight make twelve. Carry the one. Four plus eight makes twelve. Carry the—it all comes back. The pressure lets up. I'm not nothingness and the stairs aren't fangs. I'm on a mission. And further, Sammy's arm is wrapped around me, holding me up entirely. She's strong.

"Use your head, Esther. People locked up do math to keep from going crazy."

I stretch my leg and reach the stair. "I hate math." And then she offers me another equation, and I mess it up. And she laughs. And for some reason, so do I.

The stairs spiral further down. Darkness aside from my cell phone light and her dying cigarette. Her hand creeps to my shoulder. Briefly, I touch it.

The stairs open up to a sea of wooden crates. Infinite. All the size of shoe boxes. I hear Sammy's breath hitch. "Oh, my God." 

I lift my phone to my eye, and I stare into the sea. I use the rule of thirds, and I let my eye softly trace the scene ahead of me. I let it glide to the box at the center, aglow in the glint of my phone. An artist's eye. 

"That one."

We push through the freezing landscape until we meet it, tearing into the wood with our fingers, catching splinters in our hands. Sammy finally bashes the top open with a closed fist, a small gasp tickling the air. "It's beautiful!"

But I don't look inside the box; I look at the emblem, small in the corner. Two women's faces, blocky and featureless, aside from the shape of a hat on one and the pixie cut on the other. 

"You know, madam," I say, "maybe we can become friends."