Journey into the realms of the human psyche as āThe Forgotten Staircaseā blurs the line between reality and the surreal. This chilling psychological thriller beckons readers to explore the darkest corners of their minds, where nightmares take on a life of their own.
Jadeās daily life is filled with personal horrors from a past she has been too afraid to explore, until now. Her trauma-fueled night terrors are vivid, haunting, and inexplicably real. As Jade ventures deeper into the labyrinth of her subconscious, she unravels a disturbing tapestry of twisted family secrets, each more unsettling than the last.
As the line between dreams and reality blurs, Jade grapples with the ghostly remnants of her past, the oppressive presence (and absence) of her mother, and a malevolent force that seeks to destroy her sanity. Her journey becomes a race against time as her own fragile grasp on reality crumbles. āThe Forgotten Staircaseā is an exploration of the human mindās capacity for both beauty and terror. It dives deep into the emotional undercurrents that shape our realities and asks the question: Can we ever truly escape our past?
Journey into the realms of the human psyche as āThe Forgotten Staircaseā blurs the line between reality and the surreal. This chilling psychological thriller beckons readers to explore the darkest corners of their minds, where nightmares take on a life of their own.
Jadeās daily life is filled with personal horrors from a past she has been too afraid to explore, until now. Her trauma-fueled night terrors are vivid, haunting, and inexplicably real. As Jade ventures deeper into the labyrinth of her subconscious, she unravels a disturbing tapestry of twisted family secrets, each more unsettling than the last.
As the line between dreams and reality blurs, Jade grapples with the ghostly remnants of her past, the oppressive presence (and absence) of her mother, and a malevolent force that seeks to destroy her sanity. Her journey becomes a race against time as her own fragile grasp on reality crumbles. āThe Forgotten Staircaseā is an exploration of the human mindās capacity for both beauty and terror. It dives deep into the emotional undercurrents that shape our realities and asks the question: Can we ever truly escape our past?
In the second-story window of a red brick apartment building, a light was always burning. Inside, a woman was living out her existence like a ghost. Her neighbors never saw her, but occasionally, they heard her as she moved her chair across the kitchen floor. Jade was performing her nightly ritual, winding herself down to go to sleep.Ā
The apartment was decorated in a style that most people would describe as eclectic, but what they meant was that every object had been acquired second-hand. It was an odd blend of eras encapsulating everything from antique and midcentury to modern vintage. Some of the toys and games could even have been from the time when Jade was a child, but all of them had come from the memories of someone else. The only thing in the apartment that had survived her childhood was Jade herself.Ā
She didnāt like new things. She felt more comfortable digging through the leavings of the recently deceased. She couldnāt bear to watch something wonderful be thrown away because it was used. Modern craftsmanship of high quality, she felt, was a luxury of the wealthy. Jade preferred to live on the crusts that society had cut off.
She usually felt nervous when getting ready for bed, and tonight she turned on music to help distract her mind. She loved anything with a melancholy tone, and as the broody blues record turned on the player, she closed her eyes. A warm body brushed against her leg to say, āIām here.ā Her cat, Swifty, was the only living being that Jade trusted fully. She sang to him softly as she busied herself with tidying the tiny apartment.
She blew out a large candle that sat on the kitchen table. Thin wisps of smoke curled up and spread out like long white fingers in the air. Swifty followed the smoke, his head moving like a cobra to track the trails. His job was to help Jade with whatever she was doing, and he took it very seriously. He patrolled the kitchen floor as Jade made herself a cup of tea. She was still humming along even after the song had ended.
Taking her warm mug, she moved to the bench that was set into her bedroom window. The cushions were made from a pile of old patchwork quilts, and she loved nothing more than to burrow into the time-softened fabric and trace her fingertips along the elaborate patterns. She liked looking at a single patch and trying to imagine the clothing item or pillowcase the section had been in another life. Maybe this green velvet strip had once been a little girlās holiday dress, she thought.Ā
She inhaled the steam coming off the surface of her tea and held its camomille-infused breath in her lungs. Swifty took his place beside her in the window seat, and Jade stroked him idly as she watched the city twinkle in the distance. She thought the lines of cars looked like long strings of Christmas lights. When she put her fingertips near the window, almost touching it, she could feel how cold it must be outside. There was an energy between her finger and the glass that reminded her of the static charge on a TV screen.
Her limbs felt heavy, and her cup was empty, so it was time for bed. Her bed was a mass of fluffy down comforters, pillows, and stuffed animals. It was never made properly, she simply emerged from the pile when she woke up and was absorbed back into it at night. She loved the feeling of weightless melting as she merged with the tangled bedclothes. Losing awareness of her body, she soon began to drift. Her closed eyes never seemed completely dark to her, and she imagined there were mysterious forms gliding in the mist beneath her lids.Ā
She sunk beneath the pool of her consciousness and tried to will herself not to think anymore. She just wanted to let sleep take her. It was hard for her to give up control, and her dreams were somewhere she never felt steady. Swifty jumped up onto the bed and settled himself in the hammock of blankets that naturally formed for him between Jadeās ankles. His weight and his warmth quieted her mind, and she at last slipped into darkness.
When she woke up, it was still night. She could see the moonlight streaming in through the glass of a broken window, leaving bright streaks on the old wooden floorboards. She was confused. What was this place? She was in a large, four-poster bed, hung with a faded canopy that drooped and sagged under its own weight. When she moved, the old satin bedding splintered and stuck to her skin. She pulled the threads off of her arms and clothes, pushing away the feeling that she had walked through a spider web.
Her feet were bare, and the floor felt cold and damp. The wood had begun to rot, and Jade could feel her toes digging in as she stood. The room looked as if it had been very grand in its time, but it had been left to the elements for years. She could see the wall coverings peeling back to reveal dozens of layers of paint and paper underneath. Jade thought of the raw edge of a jawbreaker. Leaves and debris tumbled past the open door of the room, making a jolly, crackling sound. Curious, Jade moved to the door and peeked out of the frame. The empty hall beyond this room led to an outside door that was swinging freely on its hinges. The door moved at the will of the wind, and when it swung open, Jade could sense the scent of roses.
She thought nothing good could come with the smell of roses, but still, her feet moved on the rough boards of the hall. As she approached the exit, she heard a wooshing sound as the wind blew outside. She thought there must be large trees nearby. Hesitating for a moment, she held the door still. Whatever was out there seemed to be calling to her, compelling her to come out. She looked back into the belly of the old ruined house. There was something beautiful about its decay, and she liked to think of it transforming from something highly fashionable to this corpse of its former splendor.Ā
The scent coming from the door was becoming more alluring by the second. Now, she could sense beyond the roses that there was also lavender and honeysuckle in bloom. The light coming from the door looked almost blue, and when the wind came on again, she saw that it carried with it tiny petals and seed pods. Without another thought, she walked over the threshold. Jade felt overwhelmed by the beauty of the garden outside. There were fields of soft purple flowers crisscrossed by white stone walkways. Each stone was smooth, as if it had been plucked from a river. The hedges were lushly green and thick with roses of every lovely color.
Green and yellow moths chased each other as the fireflies bobbed in and out of the grass. Every plant and creature was singing the song it was born to. Everything seemed to Jade to be humming in harmony to form a single vibration that she felt in her bones. She was inflamed by the wonder of this place, lost in following the lines of its perfection. Everything surprised her, but then, at every turn, she felt recognition. She knew this place. It was somewhere she had been before. She tested this theory, telling herself that if she turned past the hedges, she would see a stone bench at the foot of a maple tree. Making that turn, she confirmed that there was indeed a large maple, dropping its golden leaves on the seat of a bench.
A forest hemmed the garden in on all sides, and scanning the treeline, Jade searched for an archway. She remembered a path that cut through the wall of branches, and she soon spotted the opening leading into the woods. Just inside the arch, she made out the silhouette of a man. Iām not alone here, she thought. The man raised his hand to her, but as he spoke, the wind swallowed every word. She could hear the tones he was making, but she couldnāt make them form sentences in her mind.Ā
She tried to get closer, to see the man and hear his voice more clearly, but every step she took pushed him further away. Soon, she was running down the woodland path after him, calling for him to please stay. The woods grew thicker and shut out the moonlight until she found herself alone in the dark, unable to find the path or see the man anymore. She collapsed to the ground as hot tears of frustration poured out of her eyes. āWhy canāt I find you?ā she cried as she woke slowly in her room. Swifty was sitting close to her face, and he rubbed his head against her cheek when he saw she was awake. Her tears had dampened his fur, but his concern had made her feel cared for.Ā
She held him close and waited for the sun to come up as she thought about the dream. It hadnāt felt like a dream at all. Dreams werenāt supposed to feel hot or cold; they didnāt usually smell like anything. Why had it been so real? She thought about the man. There was something so familiar about him. She felt his name was on the tip of her tongue, but she could not picture his face. She could have stayed in that garden happily for the rest of her life, but she chose to follow him. The details were starting to fade as the first cotton candy pink light came creeping up Jadeās window.
Reaching under the bed, she retrieved her dream journal from the floor. She didnāt like to look at the book and always put it away quickly after she had finished recording a dream. It was leather bound, about the size of a large scrapbook. A ribbon marked her place, and she parted the pages exactly there, careful not to look at anything that came before. Sometimes, she recorded her dreams as drawings, but today, she planned to write a small poem. She rarely described her dreams literally, finding it easier to create something artistic that represented them instead. She didnāt want to examine the details or the themes too closely; something vague to give her a safe distance felt just right.
In a garden where I shouldnāt be
I met a man I couldnāt see
I know his name, but I canāt say
I wish he wouldnāt run away
The man who lives inside my dream
Iām not as alone as it may seem.
She stared at the words for a long time. Something still unsettled her about how out of place the man had seemed. Shaking it off, she put away the book and soon forgot the dream entirely. Even Swifty seemed ready to start the day as he took a long, satisfied stretch.
The Forgotten Staircase is a nightmarish thriller that deals with mental health and a struggles we can all relate to.
Jade, the 30-something main character, finds herself in a mental hospital after dealing with nightmares that feel real. She has to leave behind her car, Swifty, and her mother basically disowns her. Jade struggles to find her way out of the hospital and back to Swifty.
It took me awhile to get interested in The Forgotten Staircase. The first few chapters are all about her nightmares. Even though the descriptions are vivid and horrifying, there were too many chapters designated to them without any other movement in the story. I found myself waiting for the story to start moving and leading somewhere. If a couple of the nightmare chapters were condensed it would make the beginning of the book have a better pace.
The scene where she woke up in the hospital with nurses pulling out tubes and a cop saying heāll tase her felt like a whiplash. It started as another sort of nightmare scene and then boom sheās in a hospital bed. Also I feel like this scene could have been handled with more care, like the cop didnāt need to be so aggressive. And I feel like nurses arenāt traditionally so rough with a fragile person. This scene pulled me out of the story because of the unnecessary aggression of everyone involved.
This book could have used another round or two of editing. There were several passages that could have been more cleaned up and fine tuned. There also needed to be less telling and more showing especially in the beginning. It was a lot of lengthy descriptions without any break making it hard to get absorbed into the story. I would have liked to get a better idea of Jade from the start but I felt like I couldnāt really understand who she was until much later in the length. Itās missing that component in the beginning to really make you root for Jade.
Once Jade was in the inpatient care, the story moved much faster and I found myself not being able to put it down. Jade came to life more and more throughout the book. The descriptions stayed very well written all throughout. The dialogue that was in the book was great, just wish thereād been more of it.
If you stick with this book past the first several chapters of nightmares this is a great thriller.