The Vanishing Staircase

The Disappearing Stairs

At the heart of the old town stood a building with no doors. Its facade was weathered brick, overgrown with ivy, and its windows were clouded with age. Locals called it The Hollow House, though no one knew who had built it or why it had been abandoned for so long.

The Vanishing Staircase.

The only way inside—or so the stories went—was through the stairs.

They appeared on certain nights, rising from the ground in front of the house like ghostly bones, shimmering faintly in the moonlight. The stairs led to a small, arched opening on the second floor, a portal into the unknown. But the stairs never stayed for long. They vanished at dawn, leaving no trace behind.

Most people avoided the house. Some said it was cursed; others said the stairs were a trap. But for Emma, the house was an obsession.

Emma had moved to the town six months ago, seeking quiet after a difficult breakup and a string of bad luck. She rented a tiny flat above a bookshop, spending her days sketching and her nights wandering the cobbled streets, hoping to find inspiration for her art.

She first saw the stairs on a cold autumn night, their edges glowing faintly under the pale moon. Drawn by their eerie beauty, she stood at the base, staring up at the arched doorway. She didn’t climb them that night—something about their presence felt too unreal, too fragile, as if a single touch might shatter them.

The next morning, the stairs were gone, leaving her questioning whether she had dreamed them.

The more she asked about the house, the more intrigued she became. The townsfolk were tight-lipped, offering only warnings.

“It’s not meant for us,” an old woman told her, shaking her head. “Leave it be.”

But Emma couldn’t let it go. She began sketching the house from memory, filling her notebook with renderings of the stairs, the archway, the shadowed windows. She visited the house every night, waiting for the stairs to appear again.

And finally, they did.

This time, Emma didn’t hesitate. She climbed the stairs, each step humming faintly under her weight. The air grew colder as she ascended, and the noises of the town—distant laughter, the rustle of wind—faded into silence.

When she reached the top, she paused before the arched doorway. It wasn’t a door at all, but a veil of darkness, as if someone had cut a hole into the fabric of the night.

She stepped through.

The room on the other side was not what she expected. It was small and circular, its walls lined with bookshelves that stretched to an impossibly high ceiling. In the center stood a low table with a single, flickering candle.

But what caught her attention most were the stairs.

They spiraled upward, made of the same ghostly light as the ones outside. And like the ones outside, they seemed both solid and insubstantial, as if they didn’t fully belong to the world.

A faint whisper echoed in the room, though Emma couldn’t make out the words. She felt an overwhelming urge to climb.

The higher she went, the stranger the house became. Each landing was a new space, disconnected from the one before.

One floor was a forest bathed in perpetual twilight, its trees whispering secrets in the wind. Another was a cavern filled with glowing crystals, their light casting fractured rainbows. On yet another, she found a room full of mirrors, each reflecting a version of herself she didn’t recognize.

With every step, the whispers grew louder, resolving into fragments of sentences.

“Don’t stop… Keep going… Find it…”

Emma didn’t know how long she had been climbing when she reached the final landing. There was no ceiling above her, only a vast expanse of stars, closer and brighter than she had ever seen. At the center of the room stood a pedestal, and on it lay a small wooden box.

She opened the box to find a single, faded photograph.

It showed a young woman standing in front of The Hollow House. Her face was obscured, but the posture and silhouette were unmistakable—it was Emma.

Her breath caught. She had never been to the house before moving to the town. How could this be?

As she stared at the photograph, the whispers stopped, replaced by a deep, resonant voice.

“You’ve found what you came for.”

Before she could respond, the stairs beneath her feet began to dissolve. Panic surged through her as she scrambled for the archway, clutching the photograph tightly.

She barely made it out before the stairs vanished entirely, leaving her standing breathless in the moonlit street. She turned back to look at the house. The arched doorway was gone, replaced by the blank brick facade.

The stairs never appeared again.

Emma returned to her flat, the photograph a constant weight in her pocket. She couldn’t make sense of what had happened—or why the house had chosen her. But as the days turned into weeks, she began to notice changes.

Her sketches, once uninspired, now seemed to flow effortlessly. Her dreams were vivid, filled with landscapes and faces she had never seen. And through it all, she felt a strange pull, as if the house wasn’t done with her yet.

The photograph remained a mystery. She never showed it to anyone, never spoke of the stairs or the house again.

But late at night, when the world was quiet, she would pull it out and stare at it, wondering if she had found the answer she was looking for—or if the house had only given her more questions.