The House with Too Many Stairs

The House with Too Many Stairs is a slow, aching romance about two people who have loved each other for twenty years in a dream, and who set out to find each…

I. The Hall of Wrong Doors

The first time Inês Carvalho dreamed of the house, she was eleven years old, and she was afraid of the stairs. They rose out of a dark hall in a long, tilting spiral, white and narrow and endless, with a rope for a banister and no top in sight. The house was tall and thin, built out over a gray-green sea, and the walls hummed faintly in the wind, like a held note. There were doors everywhere. They opened onto closets, onto fields, onto the inside of a bell. She stood at the bottom in her nightdress, barefoot on cold stone, with the smell of oranges drifting from somewhere above, and thought, with the cool, clear logic of a dreaming child: I am going to have to climb that. "It adds a step," said a voice behind her, "whenever somebody lies." She turned. A boy of thirteen was sitting on the lowest stair, in pajamas with a pattern of little rockets, with his knees drawn up and a look of grave, tired, absolute politeness. He had dark, untidy hair and a long solemn face. He had, she noticed, a red thread tied around his left wrist. "I tried to count them," said the boy. "I got to four hundred. Then I lied about having got to four hundred, and it was four hundred and one." She laughed. It was the first time in a week. Her grandmother had died in the spring, and nobody in the house in Porto had laughed since. "What's your name?" said Inês. He opened his mouth. She watched him say it. She saw his lips move, and his tongue, and the careful shape of the word. But no sound came out. It was as if somebody had cut the wire. "That happens," said the boy, looking disappointed. "It happens with everything real. Names. Places. I can't tell you where I live. I tried to point, and my arm went through the wall." He shrugged, very much like a man who has been waiting a long time to explain something to somebody. "I can tell you everything else, though. What I like. What I'm afraid of. I like trains. I'm afraid of dogs. Ask me anything." She sat down on the step beside him. The stone was cool. The oranges were stronger now, and under them was something else, the sea, a low, slow, endless breathing. "I'm afraid," said Inês, slowly, "that I'm going to forget her." "Who?" "My grandmother." The boy did not say I'm sorry. He did not say it would be all right. He put his hand, very gently, over hers, on the cold white stone. And that was how it began. She woke in her narrow bed in the house in Porto with the gray dawn in the window, and the oranges still in her nose, and the weight of a hand on her own that was not there. She sat up. She could not remember his face. She could not remember a single word of what he had said. But she remembered the thread. And she remembered the laugh. She tied a piece of red wool around her left wrist, that morning, without knowing why, and she did not take it off for twenty years.

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Quick answers about The House with Too Many Stairs

What is The House with Too Many Stairs about?

The House with Too Many Stairs is a slow, aching romance about two people who have loved each other for twenty years in a dream, and who set out to find each…

Is The House with Too Many Stairs free to read?

Yes. Every story on RapidTale is free to read in the browser, with no sign-up and nothing to install.

How long does it take to read?

This story runs 8 chapters — most readers finish in one sitting, and you can stop and return to any chapter using the contents list.

Who wrote it?

Nimra Khan — original fiction published on RapidTale.