The Weight on the Stair

What it looks like, and what it does

An empty staircase in warm lamplight, the third tread visibly flexing under no one. A banister rubbed bright where nothing has held it. A coat on a peg swinging as if brushed past.

Ascends. Does not turn back. Pauses outside certain doors for exactly one minute and then goes on.

What is known

Stairwell reports share a pattern: a creak on the third stair at 22:40, then the fourth, never quicker. Dogs refuse the stairs at that hour.

Over decades the creak has been measured climbing one tread a year in eleven buildings in four cities. In the oldest stairwell it has reached the last flight. Surveyors measured the load. It is heavier on each step as it climbs.

What it can do

• Applies measurable, increasing weight to stair treads
• Is heard by every resident of a building and seen by none

Where it stops

• Will not pass a door that has been left open
• Does not enter lifts

An encounter

Reyes marked the creaking tread with chalk each year. It is now on the sixth floor. She propped the door to the roof open with a brick. The next night the brick was moved a hand's width and the creak stopped short of it, and has not, in the following year, come any higher.

Odalys Reyes, caretaker, Number 40, Ferry Road, a six-storey block, Nightly, 22:40

What is established, and what is only said

• established: Strain gauges record a rising load per tread across eleven buildings.
• rumor: That it is always carrying something and is not allowed to put it down.
• incomplete: The one building where it reached the roof door has since been demolished. The extra step was not salvaged.

Still unresolved

In the one building where it reached the roof door, the door was found open the next morning, and the stair had gained a step that nobody had built.

Where it has been recorded

• Ferry Road (confirmed) — Recorded by Odalys Reyes, caretaker.

Stories about it

• The Weight on the Stair at Meridian Tower (Entity story, 3 min) — A caretaker at a Meridian Tower block hears a heavy tread on the fourth step of the emergency stair every night at eleven, and the weight coming up the stairs is always a little more than a single person.

Connected entities

• The Last Train Horse — Both carry a load that no instrument can place. One ascends and one pulls. Neither has put it down.