At the Foot of the God-Stairs
Short Fiction - Suspense
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Sometimes a mountain feels like a staircase, Maggie thinks. A place where gods climb up and down, passing to and fro. In the sweetness of the blue-sky day Maggie imagines living here beside the mountain forever, playing in the underbrush and running with the deer. It had been that kind of hike, the kind you want to last forever.
Maggie loved to hike. It was better than college. It was better than books. Better than the crowded dorm, the busy city, the early mornings and late nights.
She wished she could stay forever, never leave. Wished she could live under the shadow of these god-stairs, this mountain called Si with its crown of fog, its acres of old-growth woods and hidden corners and quiet meadows.
Maybe I will, she thinks. Maybe I’ll stay, and no one will find me.
Slipping between the trees she leaps from rock to rock, a feather on the breeze. Hasn’t seen another soul for hours, maybe more. Backcountry, the wild spreading garden of the mountain. Acres and acres, all to herself. Can’t remember where she had left the trail. That had been miles ago. Miles.
It had been that kind of hike.
So good, she feels weightless. Even her pack feels like it weighs nothing, full of air.
My pack is so light. So light!
Boot-toe catches on a root and she sprawls. Sudden. Pine duff scatters. Ouch.
No matter. All good.
Hop up, brush off, uptofeet, let’s go. On on on
The buffy gray jays and sleek blue stellars with their judging brows swoop above, chattering, hand-tame from offerings and supplications of hiker-snacks. Acolytes of the mountain, their wings flutter against the sky, clouds draw in pink as the sun tilts westways.
With the impending departure of the sun, Maggie thinks suddenly about making camp. But she can’t remember if she had packed her fancy-ass REI tent or not. She can’t remember.
It had been that kind of hike.
My pack is so light…
Maggie timble-tumbles over a climb of stone, perches to look and listen, and that’s when she hears it: a howl, a wild-willing wail over the shaggy treetops.
Blood-ice, skin cold, snowmelt, hair-bristle.
Maggie pauses and listens. The howl rises, trembling, and then backs away. The ground seems to thunder with a thousand footfalls, and Maggie thinks she can see the shapes of shadows darting from tree to tree, long limbs and gnashing teeth.
All of a sudden, heaven shifts on its axis. The god-stairs sit on a mouth to hell, and it is open, bared. She can feel the fire.
Oh. Oh no.
Maggie runs. Runs from the shadow shapes and their shadow-teeth. No no no
Run Maggie run! The mountain smells like blood!
The stairs go up to heaven and also down down down down
Good trail-boots thump thump thump on the dry-dust summer duff, and then the shouting starts. The shouting of demon-kind, calling through the trees, searching for her. Glow-eyes search like lights, like the high-powered flashlights her daddy used to hunt frogs at night in the pond. The shouting makes the gray jays—camp robbers, hand-tame—scatter like angels.
Maggie thinks about the pepper spray in her pack, but her pack feels so light.
No time, no time!
She runs, through thickets and over rivulets of running water. She runs until the night falls and the sound of the howling and the shouting recedes into the cricket-quiet and the glow-eyed demons lose her scent, follow paths crossways, retreat back to their hells to smoke a pack and sulk at their unsuccessful hunting. Vowing vengeance in curls of vapor.
Maggie slows. Stomach pangs. She could eat. But she can’t remember what she packed. Can’t remember what happened to her thermos, her tent, her flashlight.
Why is my pack so light.
Maggie limps to the largest tree she can find in the dark, sit-falls onto her tailbone, and when she leans against the rough bark she realizes:
The pack. It’s gone.
The damn demons and their hellhounds. They took it. They must have taken it from me when I ran. They must have.
Maggie’s eyes burn. Head down, she cries. She cries in great gulping sobs, and the salt of her tears is stronger than the sea, and she feels a little bit desperate when they slide down and touch the corner of her lip, slip onto her tongue.
I’m so hungry.
She thinks of the fancy-ass REI tent, the one her daddy told her was a stupid thing to spend so much money on when she moved out here for school. He taught her how to build a lean-to out of sticks in the backyard when she was old enough to speak. What do you need that fancy-ass tent for?
She knows the tent is gone. She doesn’t know where it landed. Can’t find it in the dark; her eyes aren’t searchlights, froglights. Not like the hauntings, the hunters. Not like the sulking demons in their hells.
If the god-stairs go up, they must go down. It makes sense, somehow.
So tired. Maggie curls into a little spiral of herself, sips her tears, feels the scrape of hunger’s nails against the inside of her soft stomach.
She sleeps.
*******
When morning comes, it is birds shrilling in her ear. Dawn, still dusky, clouds drawing in. It will rain, soon, slicking the god-stairs. Maggie can smell it, a prophecy she can taste.
The camp robbers laugh on gray wings as they swoop down, looking for trail mix. For French fries. For deli meat and American cheese. Hand-tame and curious.
Maggie has nothing to give them, and they rise to perch and sit on boughs nearby, feather-fluffed, and watch her. Acolytes of the mountain, impassive.
She sits up, ouch. She rolls her neck, ouch.
It has been that kind of hike. No pack. No tent. No food. No water. She thought maybe she wanted to stay forever, make her home here, but the haze of her hunger is giving way to the truth.
And then, she hears it: the shouting. It echoes in her heavy head.
The demons have returned from their hells on vicious feet, and the ground rumbles beneath the whole pack of them, the flock, the murder.
No no no no no
Maggie leaps to her feet, sleep-dizzy, and stumble-tumbles forward. So light. No pack. No tent. Stomach in shreds.
She runs, she runs. She flaps her arms, hoping to fly. Dizzy.
Shapes in the trees behind. They see her. The shouting fever-pitches up to heaven.
The hellhounds fly. The ghostly dogs sprout wings, leather like a bat, and she can hear them whistling. The dogs lose all of their hair and become like skeletons, snapping the air with their jaws.
No! No!
The demons are men, made of meat and cloth. Their heavy feet slap the earth, reverberate, create a buzz like sonar. Their searchlight eyes are blind in the daytime.
No! No! Demons, go back!
Maggie looks up, into the air. She looks for the camp robbers, the angels, but she is running too fast, and they cannot catch up.
Help! Help!
Toe-boot catches again, but this time the earth drops out and away and Maggie falls. Down, and down. Stone and branch connect with hip, shoulder, jaw. Bruise. Blister. Ouch. Down and down until she lands, rests, one hand in the creek-bed, hair flowing. It’s so cold.
Winded, Maggie waits on her back. She can’t move.
At the top of the slope she sees them hovering over her, silhouettes: winged dogs, men of meat and cloth, climbing down and down to take her away. She screams. She screams, eyes squinted shut.
“There she is!”
She screams to drown it out, drown out their voices.
Then, she feels a snuffling in her palm, a chilled nose, warm breath, and she opens her eyes to see a dog. No wings, no bones, no flames. Just a dog, soft-eyed and soft-faced and glinting golden in the dawn, pink tongue lolling as it smiles down at her, jowls loose and eyes friendly.
The gray-haired woman holding the dog’s leash kneels beside Maggie, pushing back her own wide-brimmed hat with a weary hand, and smiles. She’s wearing a uniform, the words National Park Service emblazoned on her coat sleeve.
“Maggie Francis,” the woman says, smiling, kind, relieved. “Geez, it’s been a long ten days looking for you, kiddo. Folks have been real worried about you. But you’re safe now. Let’s get you out of here.”
Maggie looks up the slope, past the woman and the golden dog, and sees others—dozens—scrambling down to her. To her. She wonders idly if they found her pack. She wonders if anyone spotted the fancy-ass REI tent.
She’ll want to return it.
She’s suddenly aware of every tear in her clothes, the blisters on her feet, the bleeding scrapes on her knees and elbows, the way her stomach is heaving and her forehead is hot and her throat is so dry. She’s suddenly aware of how tired she is, how cold.
Unseen, aloft, the camp robbers chuckle. Not much like angels at all, really. But, for a time, she was grateful for their keen-eyed company.
“I’ve got her. She’s okay,” the woman says into her walkie-talkie, final, jubilant, and it sounds like scripture, an incantation to close the mouth of hell and send the demons home. To smoke a pack in sulking silence. To hunt another day.
Maggie curls her fingers in the golden dog’s soft fur and laughs to tears.
It’s been that kind of hike.
END
Author’s Note:
Maggie’s tale is very loosely based on the true story of Eloise Lindsay, a hiker in the late 1980’s who was lost on the Appalachian Trail for two weeks and famously fled from those trying to rescue her because—in her weakened and panicked state—she thought they were pursuers intending her harm. Eloise’s story did eventually have a positive end, but is still considered an unusual account of a missing person in the National Park’s history.
I have changed the location and time period and exaggerated Maggie’s delusions, but the core of the narrative started with that true account.
You can read more about Eloise’s story here.
I am imagining this in an illustrated childrens book format (but not for kids). As the pages turn, the illustrations degrade into rough and vaguely haunting sketches. From “the hungry caterpillar” to “amped up spot from across the spiderverse.”
Then the dog shows up and its a sunny, friendly childrens book again.
The way you told this was unnerving but deliberately so. This was a really unique experience! Very well done!
This one had me wondering what Maggie was really seeing and worried about how it would end! My initial theory was that she was already dead, but I’m so glad I turned out to be wrong!