The World Never Ended novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Stairs

The young tech's hands moved on the laptop, and the screens behind me went black.

"Dean," Audra said from the landing. "Dean, make him stop."

"Turn it off," Dean said to the room, evenly. "This is an invasion of my private property."

"Your property," said the woman who had filmed me.

She was standing now, with her phone held high.

"I'm just saying that's a strange thing to say," she said. "If it's nothing."

Nobody laughed.

On the black screens a picture came up, gray and flat, from high above.

It was the front hall of the house.

The staircase curved up to the left.

A clock in the corner of the frame showed a date from five years ago.

I felt the room lean in.

Audra stood at the top of the stairs in a pale blue dress.

She was alone.

I came into the picture on the third step below her, holding a laundry basket.

My back was to the camera.

I remembered the basket.

I had been taking her towels to the linen closet.

On the screen I said something, and she answered, and I shook my head.

My hands were at my sides, and one still held the basket.

I had not touched her.

"Stop it," Audra whispered on the landing, and it was not a scream, it was a thin little sound.

On the screen, my sister looked past me, down the stairs.

She was looking at something at the bottom.

She looked back at me.

Then she took one deliberate step off the edge of the top stair.

She did not slip.

She did not stumble.

She stepped and went down, with her arm out, and her body hit the stairs on its side and rolled.

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