(An entrance to the House Of Stairs, location in the world of Megrim, mysterious, wondrous, and often frightening, composed entirely of stairs.)
My older brother, Morris, had been missing for three days. My parents were frantic. And I? I was losing a battle to suppress the suspicion that Morris' stories of the Under-Stair Land might not have just been make-believe, invented to entertain me.
So, come midnight, with lantern and knife, I was ready. Morris had always begun his stories of Under-Stair Land with, "It was the night of the full moon. The St. Mary's bells tolled midnight. I took the lantern from the mantle and saw where the moonlight shone into the corner of the front hall coat-closet doorframe, under the stairs. In slipped the knife, and the panel popped out."
I had looked at that doorframe a hundred times since Morris had begun to tell me his stories of Under-Stair Land, but had never seen a gap there. But now, in the moonlight, there it was! In slipped the knife, a bit of jimmying, and yes! Out popped the panel, just as Morris had said, a hidden door swinging out like the mirrored twin of the coat closet door.
It was low, of course. The coat closet occupied the taller half of the space under the front hall stairs, so this panel-door was only four foot at its taller side. But that was plenty for me; in I stepped, stopping on the triangular steps that twisted down and under the front hall staircase only to light the lantern.
I cannot honestly say which filled me more, the mission to find my missing brother or the simple thrill of discovery. Down the stairs I went, slowed only slightly by caution at the narrowness of the steps; I did not even think to have a concern for silence, despite not knowing what might wait below.
Below, I found only disappointment. Yes, there was a room down here, an old and dusty cellar. I could see the cast iron back of the furnace blocking off the doorway to the rest of the basement; this cellar had obviously just been sealed off and forgotten. Well, a secret chamber was a treasure no boy could resist, but still, it was no wondrous Under-Stair Land.
I supposed that Morris had idled away many an hour here in his secret hidey-hole. It would have been a fine place to compose his Under-Stair Land stories - but it was not the bewildering realm in which I had imagined him lost, awaiting my rescue. Disappointed, I turned and went back up the narrow wooden stairs.
And up and up. There was no twist of triangular steps to let me out by the coat closet. By the time I reached the octagonal landing I must have been well above the ground floor. At either side of the octagonal landing another stair lead upward, while in front of me another stair led back downwards into the depths. It was clear to me that there was no space in my house these steps could possibly occupy. It was clear that I was no longer in my own house.