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Five high school friends go on a camping trip and find a mysterious staircase in the woods. One of them climbs it and vanishes. Twenty years later, the staircase reappears, and they go to face it again.
I loved this premise and the cover. The staircase leading nowhere is spooky and beautiful, a weird melding of nature and civilization, so I was hoping for something that matched that vibe, like Annihilation or Revelator.
That was absolutely not what I got. The Staicase in the Woods is the misbegotten mutant child of It, King Sorrow, and Tumblr-speak. Every single character is insufferable. The teenagers are boring, and the adults are all the worst people you meet at parties. There are four men and one woman/nonbinary person, and she/they reads exactly like what MAGA thinks liberal women/trans people are like -- AuHD, blue hair, Tumblr-speak, angry, preachy, kinky sex etc. She/they says "My pronouns are she/them," then is only ever referred to as she and a woman. The staircase itself is barely in the story, where it leads is a letdown, and the ending combines the worst elements of being dumb and unresolved.
I got partway in and then skimmed because I was curious about the staircase and the vanished kid.
Angry spoilers for the whole book.
The staircase leads to a haunted house where every room shows a different horrible death. I'm not sure exactly what I wanted from "What's at the top of the staircase?" but it definitely was not "a completely unremarkable haunted house." The house also morally corrupts people. It turns out that Matty, the teenager who vanished without a trace, was probably morally corrupted by the house. He definitely changed his identity, moved to another town, and somehow went totally undetected for 20 years while also probably serially murdering women!
The remaining four vow to confront him. They go to his house and ring his doorbell. The end!
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It takes, I think, days to cross. They finally reach the other side when they are out of food and water and there's another wall. They climb over, and find a long row of skeletons and decomposing bodies sitting, leaning against a wall, looking out over an ocean. The end. I love it because, yes sometimes you *have* to know a thing, and explore, even if it's only to discover nothing, and then you die. And there's no way to send word backl to let others know - you know there's gonna be someone else come along, eventually.
No clue the title or author.
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