The Staircase

He found a lighter on the stairs on the twenty-sixth day of his journey. That was how he knew there was something for him to find up there, if he just kept climbing.

Climbing mountains had been his passion since he was a teenager. Gripping onto unforgiving stone, roots, ice; the wind calling him back. Knowing that should he slip, the earth that he clinged to for life would do nothing to save him. Clawing his way into the depths of the sky, as close as he could get to the stars. Climbing because he could, because others couldn’t. Climbing to be higher than other people.

This was his greatest climb yet. He had been going for over one hundred days.

Though he’d traveled the world seeking new heights to scale, he’d found this place close to his hometown. It was a small town surrounded by mountains and thick fog. Once, on a clearer day, he thought he saw something above the mountains. From his window, it looked like a dark line cutting across the sky, something tall and thin standing atop the mountains, or perhaps reaching down from space. It was there, and then all at once it was gone, swallowed back up by the fog.

He asked friends if anyone else had seen it. No one had.

He tried to describe it to them. He was brushed off:

“Maybe it was an electric pole.”

“Maybe it was your imagination.”

He knew they were wrong. The image of the thing in the fog was burned into his mind. He would find it, and then he could show them.

And, after days of searching, he found it. It was buried in the forest, far into the uninhabited mountain range. A stone tower with one open entryway, leading only to a set of spiraling stairs. He looked up. The tower had no visible end; it stretched on until obscured from view by tree branches and fog.

Hesitantly he stepped onto the staircase, craning his neck to see inside. His view was limited to the next few stairs ahead of him before they snaked around the central stone column. Curiosity pulled him further. About eight stairs up, there was a small window: no glass, just a narrow, rectangular hole in the wall, not wider than his head. Eight more stairs, and there was another window. He peered out and looked at the forest, then turned back to the stairs. Looking ahead, he could still only see the next few stairs in front of him. Looking back, his view was equally limited, with only the last few he had walked on still visible and the exit already out of sight. Unease washed over him.

He circled back down the stairs and left the tower. On the way home, he looked back many times, but the tower quickly faded back into the trees and the fog.

At home, his mind returned over and over to the stairs, and what might be at the end of them. He tried to tell his friends what he’d found. None of them seemed particularly impressed. He couldn’t seem to describe just what he’d seen, what he’d felt. No one understood the significance of the staircase, how it seemed to go on forever, twisting through the fog. After four days, he packed as many provisions as he could carry, and found his way back to the tower in the woods, back to the staircase.

Through the windows, he saw the dense forest, then the tops of the tallest trees, and then he just saw the fog. During the day, it appeared as white, wet light, and at night, thick velvet, impenetrable darkness. There was no scenery but the stairs. The same view repeated forever, the way he was headed always hidden behind the next turn, the way he came always slinking behind the last. The only hints he was making any progress were the varying cracks and imperfections in the stone setting each stair subtly apart from the last, and the ache in his legs from constantly hauling his body upwards. He often found himself dragging his hands along the walls, the rough stone granting him something to focus on apart from the endless spiral. Sometimes he’d only make himself stop when his hands were raw and bloody.

On the twenty-sixth day of his journey, he found a lighter on the stairs. His eyes were drawn to it immediately, the monotony of the climb suddenly broken by the small metallic glint. He lunged forward and snatched it up.

He inspected the lighter closely. The argent casing was engraved with a flowery design. He flipped the top open and lit the flame. Alone, so high up. It must have had some special quality about it. He watched the small light dance for a long while before finally closing it again.

The discovery of the lighter reinvigorated him. He climbed the stairs with a newfound energy, only stopping occasionally to watch the light, or sleep, or eat. He ate very little. He hadn’t packed expecting the climb to be quite as long as it turned out to be, but was pleasantly surprised to see how slowly he went through his food and water, allowing his climb to continue on long past its estimated limit.

After the sixtieth day, the view from the windows became a dim, grey light. There was no more night or day, only the staircase and an endless evening fog. Perhaps it was just because a staircase makes an uncomfortable bed, but he hadn’t often felt tired before. His climb had been limited to the daytime only because he couldn’t see at night. Even with the small help the lighter gave, he was afraid he’d miss some key detail, some new discovery, by climbing in the dark, and so he had slept. Now, he was free to climb as long as he wanted. He found it increasingly difficult to tell how long it had been since the last time he slept… since the last time he ate…

The lighter eventually ran out of fuel. No matter how many times he tried, he could no longer get it to light. But he carried it with him all the same, a reminder of what he was searching for, of what he might find if he just kept climbing.

He remembered climbing mountains. He remembered the views from the highest peaks and the empty congratulations from friends who couldn’t even envision the work it took for him to get to that point. Eventually he had climbed as high as he thought he could go, and he had been applauded as much as people could applaud him, and it wasn’t enough. But this climb- this was his greatest work, his greatest discovery. If he could find what was at the top, if he could show them…

He thought he smelled spoiled cabbages. He wasn’t sure how long he had smelled it; it was still faint but growing stronger as he climbed, creeping gradually into his consciousness. As it grew stronger, so did he. A smell must have had a source, something new, perhaps an end to the climb.

As he continued the smell morphed into something more specific, less familiar to him. Something fetid. It was not spoiled cabbage. Up the stairs, another turn, another turn. Soon he was enveloped in it, the smell like a thick muck that filled his mouth and nose and choked him. He pushed his face into a window, seeking some relief, but breathing the fog outside made him lightheaded. He covered his nose with his sleeve. His eyes watered. He pushed on, up the stairs, around another bend, and another.

A brown liquid dripped down the stairs ahead of him. He clambered towards it, and a large bag moved into his view. Excitement gripping him, he clumsily unzipped it and tore through its contents, finding only plastic bags, sticky with the remains of long-eaten food, an empty jug, and a half-full pack of cigarettes.

He coughed. The smell was suffocating now. His eyes followed the growing pools of liquid up the stairs, and just before the next twist in the staircase, he saw a boot.

He rose slowly from his spot by the bag and inched towards it, around the bend.

A corpse lay sprawled out on the stairs. Mouth open, beard and clothes blackened and sticky, eye sockets hollow pits. A stream of liquid flesh and waste leaked from unseen orifices, caking the stairs in viscid, putrid rot.

He jerked away from the sight of it, stumbling and falling against the stairs above. For a while he gaped at his discovery. Then he looked up at the stairs ahead. They continued on as normal, twisting around the next bend, undisturbed by the decay just below. He wondered if he should turn back. He wondered if he had enough food to make the trip back down. He remembered the empty jug in the dead man’s bag, and glanced at his own jug of water, now more than half empty.

Leaving the lighter with the dead man, he continued up the stairs.