Staircase to Silence

 Edith Kane never believed in ghosts, but she always believed in houses. She trusted old wood, the way it held its age in grain and scent. A house was honest—it could creak and groan, but it never lied. This was why she was here, standing in the foyer of a Victorian estate long left to dust and decay, her flashlight cutting through the gloom.
"Should be condemned," she muttered, stepping over a floorboard that buckled under her weight. As a real estate surveyor, she walked through places much worse. Still, there was something about this house that felt... wrong.
She moved from room to room, clipboard in hand, documenting warped ceilings, peeling wallpaper, and signs of squatters. That was when she found it—the staircase.
It shouldn't have been there.
Edith checked the original floor plans. There was no basement on record. No lower level. Yet here was a door, slightly ajar, revealing a spiral staircase descending into darkness.
Her throat tightened. She aimed her flashlight down, expecting a short flight of steps leading to storage. But the light disappeared into nothingness.
She knew better than to go down.
Yet, she did.

The Descent
Each step was heavy beneath her boots. The wood did not creak. It absorbed her presence in absolute silence. The deeper she went, the more she realized she should have reached the bottom by now.
She turned, aiming her flashlight back up.
The top of the stairs was gone.
Her breath caught in her throat. There was no door. No entryway. Just an endless descent behind her and an infinite abyss ahead.
Still, she walked.

The Door That Should Not Exist
Edith stopped. Ahead of her stood a wooden door—old, ornate, with a brass handle darkened with age. Her pulse quickened.
Then she saw the name carved into the wood.
Her name.
EDITH KANE.
Her mouth dried. She reached out and touched the name, fingers tracing each groove. The moment her skin met the wood, a whisper stirred behind the door.
A voice. Her own voice.
"Don’t close it. Please. Whatever you do, don’t close it."
Edith’s heart pounded as she turned the handle.

The Other Side
A gust of warm air hit her face as she stepped through. She was back in the house—except it was no longer abandoned. Light poured through the windows. The wallpaper was pristine. The floors gleamed under a freshly waxed polish. It was as if the house had never been empty.
Except, she wasn’t alone.
A woman stood at the far end of the hall, back turned, stiff and motionless. Edith stood frozen, her skin crawled with icy sweat. The woman was familiar—same posture, same dark ponytail, same jacket.
It was her.
Slowly, the other Edith turned, eyes sunken, face stretched into something that almost resembled her own.
"You shouldn’t be here," the other Edith whispered. "You should have closed the door."
Edith staggered back. "What are you?"
"You," the woman said. "The you that never left. The you that stayed behind."
Edith's mind reeled. That wasn't possible. She was here, real and solid.
Something grabbed her wrist.
She gasped and turned—the door. It was closing.
"NO!" The other Edith lunged forward, but it was too late.
The door slammed shut.

The Price of Knowing
Everything fell silent.
Edith stumbled back, heart racing. She was still in the house. It was still whole. But the door—the staircase—it was gone.
She spun, looking for another way out, but the house had changed. The air was stale, thick with dust. The wallpaper had curled at the edges. She saw a mist escape her lips and as she stepped forward the floor creaked beneath her a telltale echo in the empty space.
It was abandoned.
She ran to the front door, twisting the knob—it wouldn’t budge.
Then she heard it.
A sound from behind her.
A whisper. A voice she recognized.
"Don’t close it. Please. Whatever you do, don’t close it."
Her own voice.
Edith turned toward the hallway and saw it: the staircase was back.
And at the bottom, a door with her name carved into it.
 

So the next time you find yourself faced with a door that shouldn’t be there and if you notice your named brandished there it’d be best you keep walking, no better to run.