Floating Staircase

By Ronald Malfi

“Deserves to stand alongside a Stephen King or a Dean Koontz—at their best . . . A mature horror yarn” from the award-winning author of Bone White (New York Journal of Books).
 
Horror writer Travis Glasgow and his wife, Jodie, have bought their first house in Westlake, Maryland, just steps from Travis’s older brother’s home. Travis is buoyed by the thought of renewing his relationship with his estranged sibling and overcoming the darkness from his past. But the house has other plans for him. Travis is soon awakened by noises in the night and finds watery footprints in the basement that lead him to the nearby lake, which has a strange staircase emerging from its depths.
 
When Travis discovers that a former occupant of his house—a ten-year-old boy—drowned in the lake, he draws connections to his own childhood tragedy. As his brother and wife warn him to leave well enough alone, Travis is pulled into a dark obsession, following the house’s secrets to the floating staircase—and into the depths of madness . . .
 
“It would not be an overstatement to say that Floating Staircase is a modern classic ranking among some of the best supernatural affairs ever committed to print. . . . The story and setting sizzle to life through Malfi’s unparalleled literary talent.” —Dreadful Tales
 
“Malfi gives a few deft twists to the traditional haunted house theme with eerie, unpredictable, and exciting results.” —Publishers Weekly
 
“Profoundly moving, terrifying and life-affirming, this is a glorious example of what the genre of horror fiction can accomplish in the right hands.” —Horror Novel Reviews

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Jan 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781504064804

Ronald Malfi

Ronald Malfi is the award-winning author of several horror novels, mysteries, and thrillers, including the bestselling horror novel Come with Me. He is the recipient of two Independent Publisher Book Awards, the Beverly Hills Book Award, the Vincent Preis Horror Award, the Benjamin Franklin Award, and his novel Floating Staircase was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Maryland and tweets at @RonaldMalfi

Book preview

PRAISE FOR FLOATING STAIRCASE

Eerie, unpredictable, and exciting . . . Malfi’s lyrical prose and sensitive approach only heighten his tale’s emotional impact, and the final turn of events is both surprising and expertly set up. —Publishers Weekly

A clever, emotionally resonant foray into horror. —Booklist

"Floating Staircase deserves to stand alongside a Stephen King or a Dean Koontz—at their best. . . . [It is] a mature horror yarn, but, deep down, it is also an exploration of obsessions, and in particular the obsession it takes to be a writer." —New York Journal of Books

A thoughtful, multilayered tale. —Rue Morgue

Profoundly moving, terrifying and life-affirming, this is a glorious example of what the genre of horror fiction can accomplish in the right hands. —Horror Novel Reviews

Floating Staircase

Ronald Malfi

Contents

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Part Two

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Part Three

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Part Four

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Epilogue/Prologue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

For Darin,

  Jonathan,

    and Samantha—

      The beauty of this mystery …

Because he is my brother, I will suffer a thousand deaths to vindicate his.

    —Alexander Sharpe, The Ocean Serene

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

      —F. Scott Fitzgerald, in an undated letter to his daughter

Part One

The Purity of the Territory

Chapter One

It has been said that nature does not know extinction. In effect, it knows only change: nothing ever truly disappears, for there is always something—some part, some particle, some formidable semblance—left behind. You can boil water into vapor, but it hasn’t disappeared. Curiosity killed the cat, but condensation brought it back.

Therefore, such logic should enlighten us to the understanding that if something should happen to develop—should arrive, should become thus, should suddenly appear—then it has always been. Forms evolve and devolve but things always are. There exists no creation and, consequently, no destruction—there exists only transformation. It is a collision of electrons and positrons, this life: the transformation of matter to rays of light, of molecular currents, of water to vapor to water again.

When I was twenty-three, I wrote a novel called The Ocean Serene. It was about a young boy who, having survived a near drowning, has a door of repressed memories opened in his brain, but in truth it was really about my dead brother, Kyle.

I wrote it in the evenings at a small desk in my depressed one-bedroom apartment in the Washington, D.C. neighborhood of Georgetown (across the street from a smattering of university buildings and just a few blocks from where The Exorcist had been filmed many years before). A mug of coffee—black, no sugar—expelled ribbons of steam to one side of my word processor while an ashtray sprouting the flattened, yellowed elbows of cigarette butts sat on the other side. The central air did not always function properly, and I would occasionally crank open the bedroom windows to allow fresh air in. In fact, I remember opening the windows and smoking countless cigarettes and drinking cup after cup after cup of oily coffee more than the actual writing of the manuscript.

I wrote in a fog, in a haze … as though a length of gauze had been gently draped over the undulating contours of my brain. After writing the first draft, it took the accumulation of a couple more years and some deep personal reflection before I could once again tackle the manuscript and assemble it into something honest. For whatever reason, I felt this nagging drive to write it as honest as I could. So I wrote the first draft, then tucked it away and busied my mind with other matters until, moons later, I felt I had attained some fraction of personal growth—both in my writing and in the way I interpreted and understood the world—to revisit it. While the story was undeniably an exercise in speculative fiction—a horror novel, in other words—it was as real to me as the memories I carried of my childhood. It was difficult to relive the past. Age brings with it a certain kryptonite that drains our faith like vampires, and reading the manuscript again almost destroyed me.

But I rewrote and finished it in a fever. It was done, and I couldn’t help but feel relieved. It was tantamount to the spiritual and emotional exhaustion felt after my younger brother’s death. I did not understand why such a thing had eluded me during the writing of the manuscript, but it struck me like a mallet to a gong after finally completing it. And I found I did not know how to feel about what I had just done.

Without combing through the manuscript for typos and inconsistencies, I sent it to the acquisitions editor of a small specialty press with whom I had maintained a formal yet consistent dialogue over the past several months. While I waited to hear from him, I began to doubt myself—not the book, just myself—and wondered if I’d done the right thing in writing the book. I couldn’t tell if I’d commemorated the memory of my younger brother or if I’d cheapened it, ruined it, made it a circus accessible to anyone willing to pay the price of admission.

Weeks later, during an onslaught of rainy weather so violent and unrelenting it seemed the world was preparing to end, the editor informed me that the book had been accepted for publication. He had a few changes, but he said it was a good, strong story written in a good, strong, lucid voice. The book was slated for a hardcover release in the fall.

One question, said the editor.

Yes?

Alexander Sharpe? It was the nom de plume I’d used on the cover page of the manuscript. Since when have you decided to use a pseudonym?

Over the phone, I tried to sound as casual as possible. Wanted to see if Mr. Sharpe would have better luck in the publishing department than I’ve had. I guess he does.

But that wasn’t the truth.

I couldn’t tell him that I needed to distance myself from it while at the same time I also needed to embrace it. It would make no sense. To me, it seemed a stranger was better prepared to introduce my dead brother’s story to the world than I was. A nonexistent stranger at that. Because I was biased. Because I could not detach myself from it, and to not detach myself from it would be to corrupt the story’s honesty into loathsome self-pity. And I would not allow that to happen.

Because all good books are honest books.

I celebrated with friends, who bought me shots of gasohol and tried to get me laid despite my recent (though undisclosed) intention to finally propose to my longtime girlfriend, Jodie Morgan, and then I celebrated alone with a full pack of cigarettes, a flask of Wild Turkey, and a stroll around Georgetown. Perhaps out of a need for affirmation, I found myself outside one of the neighborhood bars in D.C., punching numbers on a pay phone. It rang several times before my older brother, Adam, picked up.

I think I just wrote a book about Kyle, I said, drunk, into the receiver.

Well, it’s about goddamn time, bud, Adam said, and I felt myself grow wings and lift off the pavement.

On occasion I found my mind sliding back to that late autumn when I sat and smoked and wrote about my younger brother’s death. I remembered the change of seasons predicated by the changes of the leaves in the trees; the windswept, rain-soaked nights that smelled swampy and full of promise; the retinal fatigue suffered from hours of staring at the throbbing glow of my monitor. It was the only thing I’d ever written that caused me to suffer from sleepless exhaustion. I roved with the flair of a zombie through the streets late at night and subsisted in a state of near catatonia while at my day job as a copy editor for The Washington Post (making just enough money to stave off my landlord while maintaining a sufficient stockpile of ramen noodles and National Bohemian).

One evening found me dodging traffic on the corner of 14th and Constitution in downtown D.C., the solitary pedestrian caught in a freezing downpour, until I wound up drunk and with my teeth rattling like maracas in my skull at the foot of the Washington Monument. I proclaimed to the phallic structure, I will eat you, a phrase that to this day still boggles the mind, whether spoken to a stone monument or otherwise. Then I saluted it and, pivoting on my heels, turned across the lawn toward 14th Street. The series of events that eventually returned me to my apartment that evening remain a question for the ages.

The book was my gift to Kyle, but the writing of it was my punishment; the hours spent curled over that word processor hammering out the story were my penance. Having never been a religious person—having no belief in God or any variation thereof—it was all I had. And in thinking back on that time, I was reminded of the exhaustion that accompanied every moment.

I was thirteen when Kyle died.

And it was my fault.

Chapter Two

We hit flurries coming out of New York, but by the time we crossed into Maryland, the world had vanished beneath a blanket of white. Baltimore was a muddy blur. Industrial ramparts and graffiti-laden billboards seemed overcome by a deathly gray fatigue. Bone-colored smokestacks rose like medieval prison towers, the tops of which were eradicated by the blizzard, and cars began pulling off onto the shoulder in a flare of hesitant red taillights and emergency flashers.

We should stop, Travis, Jodie said. She was hugging herself in the passenger seat and peering through the icy soup that sluiced across the windshield.

The shoulder’s too narrow. I don’t want to risk someone running into us.

"Can you even see anything?"

The windshield wipers were clacking to a steady beat, but the temperature had dropped low enough for ice to bloom in stubborn patches on the windshield. I cranked the defroster, and the old Honda coughed and groaned, then belched fetid hot breath up from the dashboard. With it came the vague aroma of burning gym socks, which caused Jodie to rock back in her seat and moan.

I hope this isn’t an omen, she said. A bad sign.

I don’t believe in omens.

That’s because you have no sense of irony.

Turn the radio on, I told her.

The snowstorm didn’t let up until Charm City was a cold sodium smear in the rearview mirror. Two hours after that, as the car chugged west along an increasingly depopulated highway, the sky opened up and radiated with the clear silver of midday. We motored on through an undulating countryside of snow-covered fields. Houses began to vanish, and telephone poles surrendered to shaggy firs overburdened with fresh snow. The alternative rock station Jodie had found back in Baltimore crackled with the lethargic twang of country music.

Jodie switched off the radio and examined the road map that was splayed out in her lap. What mountains are those up ahead?

Allegheny.

With only the faint colorless summits rising out of the mist, they resembled the arched backs of brontosauruses.

Lord. Westlake’s not even on the map. She glanced out the window. I’ll bet there’s not another living soul out there for the next twenty, thirty miles.

Despite the hazardous driving conditions, I stole a glimpse of my wife. Aquiline-featured and mocha-skinned, her springy black hair tucked beneath a jacquard cap, she looked suddenly and alarmingly youthful. Memories of our first winter in North London rushed back to me: how we’d huddled around the wood-burning stove for warmth when we couldn’t get the furnace to kick on while watching an atrocious British sitcom on cable. London had been good to us, but we were excited by the prospect of returning to the States—to my home state, in fact—and finally owning our own home.

The past decade of struggling to make ends meet had paid off when my last novel, Water View, rocketed in sales and managed to attract a Hollywood option. The film was never made, but the option money put my previous book advances to shame, so we decided to trade in our draughty Kentish Town flat for a single-family home. It hadn’t occurred to us to come back to the States until Adam called to say he found us a house in his neighborhood. The previous owners had already moved out and were desperate to sell. At such a bargain, it promised to go quickly. I conferred with Jodie and, blindly putting our trust in my older brother’s judgment, we bought the house, sight unseen.

Are you nervous? Jodie said.

About the house?

About seeing your brother again. She rested a hand on my right knee.

Things are okay between us now, I said, though for a moment I couldn’t help but remember what had happened the last time we’d been together. Except for the clarity of the memory, it could have been a dream, a nightmare.

We haven’t been around family for Christmas in a long time.

I said nothing, not wanting to be baited into talking about the past.

I think that you’ve somehow driven us off the face of the Earth, Jodie said, blessedly changing the subject.

It’s gotta be—

There, she said. There was an edge of excitement in her voice. Down there!

In the valley below, a miniature town seemed to blossom right out of the snow. I could make out the grid of streets and traffic lights like Christmas balls. Brick-fronted two-story buildings and mom-and-pop shops huddled together as if for warmth. The main road wound straight through the quaint downtown section, then continued toward the mountains where clusters of tiny houses bristled like toadstools in the distant fields. The whole town was embraced by a dense pine forest, through which I thought I could see the occasional glitter of water.

Jodie laughed. Oh, you’re shitting me! It’s a goddamn model train set.

Welcome to Westlake, I said. Next stop—Jupiter.

I took the next exit and eased the Honda down an icy decline. We came to a T in the road, and Jodie read the directions off a slip of paper I’d stowed in the glove compartment. We hung a left and drove straight through the middle of town, digesting the names of all the businesses we passed—Clee Laundromat, Zippy’s Auto Supply, Guru Video, Tony’s Music Emporium. The two most creative were a hair salon called For the Hairing Impaired and an Old West–style saloon, complete with swinging doors and a hitching post, called Tequila Mockingbird.

Jodie and I groaned in unison.

We turned down Waterview Court and followed it as it narrowed to a single lane, the trees coming in to hug us on either side.

Did you notice? Jodie said.

Notice what?

Waterview. It’s the name of your last book.

Maybe that’s another one of your beloved omens, I said. A good one this time.

Waterview dead-ended in a cul-de-sac. Warm little houses encircled the court, their roofs groaning with snow.

There he is, I said and hammered two bleats on the car horn.

Adam stood in the center of the cul-de-sac, mummified in a startling red ski jacket, knitted cap, and spaceman boots. He had a rolled-up plastic tube beneath one arm. Behind him, two puffy blots frolicked in the snow—Jacob and Madison, my nephew and niece.

Smiling, I tapped the car horn one last time, then maneuvered the vehicle so I could park alongside the curb. The undercarriage complained as the Honda plowed through a crest of hard snow, and before I had the car in park, Jodie was out the door. She sprinted to Adam, hugged him with one arm around his neck, and administered a swift peck to his left cheek. My brother was very tall, and Jodie came up just past the height of his shoulders.

Hey, jerk face, I said, climbing out of the car. Get your mitts off my wife.

Come here, Adam said, grabbing me into a strong embrace. He smelled of aftershave lotion and firewood, and I was momentarily kicked backward into nostalgic reverie, recalling our father—who had smelled the exact same way—when we were kids growing up in the city. Man, he said, breathing into the crook of my neck, it’s good to see you again, Bro.

We released each other and I took him in. He was well built, with a studious, sophisticated gaze that was capable of being stern without compromising his charm and his innate approachability. He’d put those traits to work to become the policeman he’d always wanted to be when he was a kid. From seemingly out of the blue, I was overcome by a sense of pride that nearly buckled my knees.

You look good, I said.

Kids! Adam called over his shoulder.

Jacob and Madison, clumsy and bumbling through the snow, bounded to my brother’s side, adjusting gloves, knitted caps, earmuffs that had gone askew.

My God, they’ve gotten so big, I said.

You guys remember your uncle Travis? Adam asked.

I crouched down, bringing myself to their eye level.

Madison took a hesitant step backward. She had been only a baby the last time I saw her so I held out little hope she’d remember me.

Ten-year-old Jacob scrunched up his face and nodded a couple of times. He was the more brazen of the duo. I remember. You lived in a different country.

England, yes.

Do they talk a different language there?

They speak the same language as you, old chap, I said in my best cockney accent, and I rather think they had it first, wot-wot.

Jacob laughed.

Madison was emboldened to take a step toward me, smiling at my ridiculous impression or her brother’s willingness to laugh at it.

Did you bring us anything from England? Jacob asked.

Madison’s eyes lit up.

Hey, now, Adam scolded. We don’t do that.

Jacob’s gaze dropped to his boots. Madison’s remained on me, appearing hopeful that she’d reap the rewards of her brother’s question.

I exchanged a look with Adam.

He nodded.

Well, as a matter of fact, I said, dipping one hand into the pocket of my parka. I produced two Snickers bars—uneaten rations from our road trip from New York—and, fanning them like a deck of cards, extended them to the kids.

They snatched them up with the speed of light, and Madison had it in her mouth a mere nanosecond after the wrapper was off.

My sister-in-law, Beth, came out of her house and marched down the shoveled driveway toward us. She was a smart, determined woman whose body bore the rearing of her two children with a mature, domestic sophistication. The last time I’d seen her, which had been just before Jodie and I moved to North London, she’d called me a piece of shit and looked ready to claw my eyes out with her fingernails.

So good to see you, sweetie, Beth said, gathering Jodie up in a hug. Beth was only slightly older than my wife, but at that very moment she could have passed for Jodie’s mother.

They let each other go, and Beth came over to me. The famous author. She kissed the side of my face.

Hey, Beth.

You look good.

She was lying, of course; I’d grown paler and thinner over the past few months, my eyes having recessed into black pockets and my hair having grown a bit too long to keep tidy. It was writer’s block, keeping me up at nights.

All right, enough small talk. Jodie was glowing. Let’s see this house already.

Yeah, I said, surveying the houses around the cul-de-sac. They all appeared to have cars in the driveways. Which one is it?

Adam fished a set of keys from his pocket. None of these. Come on.

Adam led us toward a copse of pines. A dirt path cut through the trees and disappeared. We crunched through the snow and headed down the dirt path.

I started laughing, then paused halfway through the woods. You’re kidding me, right?

Adam’s eyes glittered. You should have seen the movers backing the truck up to the house. He continued walking.

Jodie came up alongside me, brushing her shoulder against mine, and said in a low voice, If this goddamn place is made out of gingerbread, your brother’s in hot water.

Then we stepped into the clearing.

It was a white, two-story Gablefront with a wraparound porch and a gray-shingled roof tucked partway behind a veil of spindly trees. It wasn’t a huge house, but it was certainly a world of difference from our claustrophobic North London flat. And even with its obvious cosmetic deficiencies—missing shingles, missing posts in the porch balustrade, wood siding in desperate need of a paint job—it looked like the most perfect house in the known universe.

Adam had sent us pictures over the Internet, but it took being here, standing in front of the house—our house—for it to finally sink in and make it real.

Well? Adam said, standing akimbo by the front porch. Did I do good or what, folks?

You did perfect. Jodie laughed, then threw her arms around me, kissed me. I kissed her back.

Jacob and Madison giggled.

You did perfect, too, baby, she said into my ear. I hugged her tighter.

The house sat on three full acres, with a sloping backyard that graduated toward the cusp of a dense pine forest. It was immense, the type of forest in which careless hikers were always getting lost, covering what could have been several hundred acres.

On closer inspection, the house appeared almost human and melancholy in its neglect. The shutters hung at awkward angles from the windows, and the windowpanes were practically opaque with grime. Frozen plants in wire mesh baskets hung from the porch awning, each one so egregiously overgrown that their roots spilled from the bottom of the basket and hung splayed in the air like the tentacles of some prehistoric undersea creature. Veins of leafless ivy, as stiff as pencils in the cold, trailed up the peeling, flaking wood siding, which was mottled and faded, hinting at shapes hidden within the deteriorating wood.

Adam tossed me the house keys. So, are we gonna stand around here freezing our butts off, or are we gonna check out the new digs?

I handed the keys to Jodie. Go ahead. Do the honors.

Jodie mounted the two steps to the porch, hesitating as they creaked beneath her. There was a porch swing affixed to the underside of the awning by rusted chains, the left chain several inches longer than the right. The wicker seat had been busted out presumably a long time ago, leaving behind a gaping, serrated maw. The electric porch lights on either side of the front door were bristling with birds’ nests, and there was bird shit speckled in constellation fashion on the floorboards below. Yet if Jodie noticed any of this, she did not let on.

Jodie slipped the key into the lock as the rest of us gathered on the porch behind her. We waited patiently for her to open the door. Instead, she burst into laughter.

What? I said. What is it?

It’s insane, she said. "This is our first home."

The house had a very 1970s feel to it, with ridiculous shag carpeting and wood paneling on the first floor. At any moment I expected a disco ball to drop from the ceiling. There were floor tiles missing in the kitchen, and it looked like the walls were in the process of vomiting up the electrical outlets, for many of them dangled by their guts from the Sheetrock.

The Trans-Atlantic movers had deposited our belongings pretty much wherever they found space, and we maneuvered around them like rats in a maze as we went from room to room.

Jodie gripped my hand and squeezed it. This is great.

It needs some work.

Upstairs, there were two bedrooms—a master and a spare—as well as a third room that would make a perfect office for my writing and Jodie’s work on her doctoral dissertation. A second full bathroom was up here as well. With some disdain, I scrutinized the chipped shower tiles and the sink that could have been dripping since Eisenhower was in office.

Travis, Jodie called from down the hall. Come look. You won’t believe this.

She was in the master bedroom at the end of the hall. The movers had propped our mattress at an angle against one wall and left our dresser in the middle of the room. Boxes of clothes crept up another wall.

Look, Jodie said. She was gazing out of the wall of windows that faced the backyard.

I came up behind her and peered over her shoulder. Beyond the white smoothness of the lawn and seen through a network of barren tree limbs, a frozen lake glittered in the midday sun. On the far side of the lake, tremendous lodgepole pines studded the landscape, their needles powdered in a dusting of white. It was a breathtaking, picturesque view, marred only by the curious item toward the center of the lake—a large, dark, indescribable structure rising straight up from the ice.

Did you know there was a lake back here?

No, I said. Adam never said anything.

Jesus, this is gorgeous. I can’t believe it’s ours.

It’s ours. I kissed her neck and wrapped my arms around her. What do you suppose that thing is out there? Sitting on the ice?

I have no idea, Jodie said, but I don’t think it’s sitting on the ice.

No?

Look at the base. The ice is chipped away, and you can see the water.

Strange, I said.

Suddenly, we were both startled by a high-pitched wail, followed by the quick patter of small feet on the hardwood floor. It wasn’t the type of frustrated cry typical of agitated young children; there was fear in this shriek, possibly pain.

I rushed out onto the upstairs landing and glanced down in time to see Madison running into her mother’s arms in the foyer. Beth scooped up the little girl and hugged her tight.

What happened? I said, coming partway down the stairs.

Beth shook her head: she didn’t know. She smoothed back Madison’s hair while the girl clung to her like a monkey.

Adam appeared beside them and asked Madison what was wrong, but she did not answer. Her crying quickly subsiding, she seemed content to bury her face in Beth’s shoulder.

Adam looked at me. What happened? The amount of accusation in his tone rendered me speechless. What’d you do?

It wasn’t until Jacob came up behind me on the stairs that I realized to whom Adam had been directing his questions.

What happened? Adam repeated.

Jacob shrugged. The kid looked miserable. Maddy got scared.

Scared of what?

Again: the slight roll of tiny shoulders. Something scared her. Wasn’t me. I promise.

Adam sighed and ran his fingers through his tight, curly hair. Get down here, Jacob.

Expressionlessly, the boy bounded down the stairs.

I followed, stuffing my hands into my pockets. I paused beside Beth and rubbed Madison’s head.

She squirmed and swung her legs, causing Beth to grunt when she struck her in the belly. Cut it out now, Beth muttered into her daughter’s hair.

You never said anything about a lake out back, I said to Adam.

Didn’t I?

And the basement? Where is it?

In the attic. Where else?

Ha. Don’t quit your day job. I strolled past him down the hallway toward the one door I hadn’t yet opened.

Adam called after me: "The movers put all your boxes marked storage down there."

Thanks. I opened the door on a set of rickety wooden stairs that sank deep into a concrete cellar. Somewhere down there a light burned, casting a tallow illumination on the exposed cinder block walls. I descended the stairs halfway until I saw an exposed bulb in the center of the low ceiling, hanging from several inches of wire. Its pull cord swayed like a hypnotist’s pocket watch.

A number of boxes were stacked at the foot of the stairs. I stepped over them and tugged on the pull cord, which broke off in my hand and sent the bulb swinging, casting alternating shadows around the room.

Goddamn it.

Standing on my toes, I reached up and steadied the light but couldn’t slip the cord back into place to shut it off. In

Reviews for Floating Staircase

[whitewavedarling · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Nearly from the first page, this book took me in and held me in thrall, keeping me reading long past the point at which my eyes were needing a break. For a horror novel, this book is frighteningly believable, and the characters are just so flawed and believable as to make you ache for each of their missteps and difficulties. Malfi's smooth writing and smart pacing are the added bonuses that make this book a wonderfully engaging read.All together, any reader of suspense novels or ghost stories is going to fall headlong into this book, only to be able to surface days later.Absolutely recommended.

[rrjames_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ron Malfi has delivered a great novel with Floating Staircase. Well-crafted characters draw you into the mystery Travis Glascow must solve when he and his wife move into a new home on a lake. The plot twists and turns in every chapter and you’ll be hanging on through all of them. Ron’s prose is a delight to read. The section where he describes a family in the aftermath of tragedy should be in creative writing textbooks. Be warned that when you start this book, it will consume you until you turn the last page

[yoyogod · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Floating Staircase is a very creepy ghost story. It's about a writer named Travis Glasgow who moves into a house in a small town called Westlake. He starts to notice strange things happening in his house, and soon discovers that the previous owner's drowned in the lake behind his house. There is a mystery though as to weather it was an accident or a murder. Travis feels compelled to investigate the case because of his unresolved guilt from his role in the drowning death of his younger brother. From there, he begins a slow decent into madness and obsession.This was one of the best horror novels I've read this year. If you're a fan of horror, or just good stories, you should read this book.

[tymfos · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Travis is forever haunted by the drowning of his younger brother, for which he feels a sense of responsibility. He is a horror writer whose books reflect a drowning/water theme over and over. He and his wife move into an old house near a lake. They learn that a boy who previously lived there had drowned in the lake, and his body was never recovered. Odd things happen which make Travis think that the boy's ghost is reaching out to him, and Travis becomes obsessed with the notion that the child was murdered. He drops his current writing project to focus on a new book about the child's death.This was pretty good. It was a ghost story that kept the haunting subtle and creepy, not over-the-top like a lot of modern horror stories. It was, for the most part, very well written. I liked the atmospheric descriptive passages, though on one or two occasions Malfi's use of metaphor and simile was a little heavy-handed. The real focus of the story was less on the paranormal events, and more on Travis's guilt over his brother's death and his obsession with the boy who drowned near their home, and how it impacts his mental state and relationships with others. In fact, he becomes unstable enough that the reader might easily wonder if the haunting is all in his mind. But the author does a good job of creating a spooky atmosphere and building up tension.Travis repeatedly voices a strong sense that books and writing should be honest -- perhaps a reaction against how he has hidden the details of his brother's death even from those closest to him.I liked the Western Maryland setting, and mention of familiar places like Frostburg and Cumberland. I do wonder why Malfi felt the need to invent a Frostburg Medical Center that is brick and looks like a castle and houses a cancer ward; the real Frostburg Medical Center is an urgent care center (no inpatients) in a shopping plaza. (So much for honesty in writing.) That little quibble aside, this was a pretty well-written novel for those who like a little spookiness, a bigger dose of psychological tension, and a great twist at the end.

[jen6e6moore · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A perfectly acceptable ghost-story-murder-mystery, with some particularly vivid dream sequences.

[coloradogirl14 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In Ronald Malfi’s latest book, The Floating Staircase, Travis Glasgow and his wife buy a house in Maryland with a distinctive feature: a staircase rising out of the lake behind the property. But it’s easy enough to overlook, until Travis starts hearing weird noises and seeing shadows flit across the house. He realizes that the ghostly incidents are connected with the staircase, and he begins to investigate. But the more he uncovers about the house’s history, the more he realizes that some secrets can’t stay hidden forever.This book takes the traditional haunted house story and combines it with an extremely compelling murder mystery – so compelling, in fact, that I found myself just as obsessed with the house’s secret as Travis Glasgow. And the author does a fantastic job of taking the small ghostly incidents (a strange noise, a shadow flitting across a hallway) and transforming them into something truly unsettling. A very impressive and entertaining ghost story.

[runner56_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is an extraordinary well written story about about one man's attempt to find redemption and some form of closure to an incident that occurred during his formative years. Ronald Malfi manages to blend superbly elements of horror and crime nicely presented in the guise of small town America. Travis Glascow and his wife Jodie have settled in the pretty little community of Westlake Maryland but as befits all good storytelling nothing is ever as it seems and, as we are shown, the perfect life is something we all strive for but few achieve. Travis is haunted by the death of his younger brother Kyle, left under his protection but who tragically died jumping from an old wooden pier. The house in Westgate has a sinister past, Elijah Dentman, son of the previous owners met a tragic and untimely demise but even in death the spirit of Elijah refuses to rest "Nature does not know extinction. It knows only change. Metamorphosis. It knows that when life is snuffed out and the soul vacates the body, it must, by definition, go somewhere. And if you don't believe in God or a god or in heaven and hell, then where do souls go?"What makes this book such a wonderful achievement, so deep thought and contemplative is the authors style of writing. In a reflective mood Travis thinks back to his childhood and in particular his father "My father, who'd always been an intimidating physical presence, seemed to grow smaller day by day, some vital bone or organ now broken within him. He reminded me more and more of those rusted old cars on concrete blocks, colorless weeds growing all around him. He became an alcoholic after Kyle's death and maintained that ungodly and self-deprecating profession until prostate cancer punched his card many years later." Just look at the poetic nature of the opening paragraph to Chapter 18 " When you withdraw from the world, you find that the world withdraws from you, too. Then all that's left is the Greyness, the Void, and this is where you remain. Like a cancerous cell. Like a cut of tissue, diseased, in a Petri dish. You glance down and there it is: this gaping gray hole in the center of your being. And as you stand there and stare into it, all you see is yourself staring back."Suffice to say this style permeates throughout the book and makes for rich and rewarding reading. Introduce to this a mix some wonderful, colourful characters; Althea Coulter tutor to Elijah and an old lady sadly dying of cancer, Earl Parsons veteran seasoned reporter, Veronica and David Dentman parents of tragic Elijah and possibly holding the secrets and answers that Travis seeks in his search for the truth and maybe just maybe his own salvation.

[bunnyhero-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

finding it difficult to give this a rating. overall well-written, but perhaps a little too ambitious? so the 3 I am giving this is much different than a 3 I would give another book. I'd rather read more ambitious-but-not-quite-hitting-the-mark 3s like this than entertaining-enough 3s. I think. rating things is hard...

[elisabethzguta · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Floating Staircase by Ronald Malfi is a unique story, told through the main character's experiences, and the eyes of a writer. He has past regrets that haunt his thoughts, and influences his choices. The protagonist has moved into a new home, near his brother, with whom he wants to make amends and build a stronger relationship. The house has a history of tragedy. The character becomes consumed in finding the truth. The ending was a surprise, and left me with an Aha moment. I liked the story, it had some good twists, and did make one think about the wise words, 'don't judge a book by its cover' or 'don't jump to conclusions'. The story builds, so I suggest this to anyone who likes to feel the story develop.

[carol420 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Travis Glasgow has just moved to a very small town where his older brother lives. He and his wife love the old house, but as soon as they move in strange things start to happen. A tiny, hidden room in the basement is found. Unexplainable noises come from the dark. Things are moved around when no one is touching them. It turns out a young boy died on the property, and the more Travis finds out, the more he thinks that it wasn't an accident, and he sets out to prove it, or, really, becomes obsessed with figuring it out. This puts a strain on his marriage, his relationship with his brother, and calls into question his mental state, since his own younger brother died as a boy.

Is the ghost of the young boy trying to get Travis to solve a crime? Or is Travis's long held guilt feelings over his brother's death taking over his mind? It's hard to tell; we're kept guessing up to the end of the story. A well earned 5 stars.

[lauriebrown54 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

While billed as a ghost story, ‘Floating Staircase’ is more of a detective story. There seems to be a ghost- there may even be two of them- the psychological ghosts of the past are every bit as strong a force as it is. Travis Glasgow has just moved to a very small town where his older brother lives. He and his wife love the old house, but as soon as they move in strange things start to happen. A tiny, hidden room in the basement is found. Unexplainable noises come from the dark. Things are moved around when no one is touching them. It turns out a young boy died on the property, and the more Travis finds out, the more he thinks that it wasn’t an accident, and he sets out to prove it, or, really, becomes obsessed with figuring it out. This puts a strain on his marriage, his relationship with his brother, and calls into question his mental state, since his own younger brother died as a boy. Is the ghost of the young boy trying to get Travis to solve a crime? Or is Travis’s long held guilt feelings over his brother’s death taking over his mind? It’s hard to tell; we’re kept guessing up to the end of the story. Pretty much every reviewer has rated this book very highly, but while it’s a *good* book, I didn’t find it as outstanding as others did. The creepy aspects were largely played down while the detective aspects took over. The plot dragged; while there were always things happening, they were almost all low key; there was a constant feeling of tension but no ups and downs to break it up. This made it seem flat. The attempt to sustain constant tension might have worked in a shorter story, but at nearly 500 pages it’s just doesn’t work. The characters were never developed very well, and after awhile I quit caring.

[carl_alves_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed The Gate House when I first started reading the novel mostly because of the first person narrator’s voice, unfortunately after a few chapters, it crashed and burned like a fighter jet being shot down. This novel was bad on so many different levels that it’s hard to find a starting point. First off, the novel was obscenely long. Three quarters of this novel could be cut off without missing a beat. It seemed like the author could not go more than a few paragraphs without lapsing back into flashbacks. Even worse, he kept regurgitating the same information over and over again. I heard the details of John Sutter’s wife killing Frank Bellarosa about 87,000 times including every aspect of his feelings and what happened and the events surrounding it. Enough already. Secondly, the characters in this novel were awful. There was not a single likeable character. I was liking John Sutter a little at first until the point where despite his ex-wife cheating on him and killing her lover, as well as being depicted as self-centered, spoiled, clueless rich girl, it took him about two seconds to get back together with her after the first time they met in a decade. After that point, the novel was all downhill. The writing was weak. There was very little positive to say about this. Avoid this novel at all costs.Carl Alves – author of Blood Street