You’ve probably never counted how many steps are on your staircase, yet, if you were to walk those steps with your eyes closed, you’d know exactly when you’ve reached the top. So, what would you do if you knew you’d reached the top, and then suddenly, there was one more step? Just one. You’d probably brush it off; count it as an error. What if you were two off? Then three? At what point would you realize something was wrong? Which step?
My grandmother was a first-generation Chinese immigrant to the United States. Grandma always said I looked like my mom when she was my age, no matter what age I was. I always looked like mom apparently. Grandma died last year. She did well enough for herself, but my mom did even better, especially as a single parent raising my brother and me. She bought this house, a one-story space with a basement, perfect for the four of us. Grandma always watched us while my mom was at work. Grandma almost exclusively spoke Chinese. I was a bit of a brat; once I realized that everyone at school only spoke English, I had little interest in keeping up my Mandarin. As a result, grandma and I didn’t always talk much. But I still remember her stories. Ye Xian, The Magic Lotus Lantern, Sun Wukong and The Journey to the West; that one was particularly close to grandma. I wondered if she ever wanted to return to China like the Monkey King.
It was nice to be able to put Mandarin on a resume. Although, it may seem antithetical considering my degree is in English Literature. I was the first in my family to graduate college at the ripe old age of 22. Upon graduating, I wanted nothing more than a break, so I moved back in with my mom and my brother. But now it seemed my break was going to be longer than I intended. There was less to do with an English degree than I anticipated. I was sending my resume and credentials left and right. I guess nobody wanted a little Asian Shakespearean even frying their chicken.
One night, I considered putting Smith as my last name on my resume, just as a little experiment. I was in the basement, watching a movie while emailing job applications on my laptop. I sent in my last round of credentials and checked the time: 1:02 a.m. I closed my laptop, tossing it gently on the couch cushion next to me. I reached to grab my phone off the charger. Turning its face to me, I found it was dead. I had forgotten the charger downstairs was broken. No sweat, I thought, I’ll just sleep in my room tonight and charge it there. I turned off the TV. It was pitch black. Of course, I had navigated this basement thousands of times. Like clockwork, I made my way around the couch, down the short hall, up the four stairs to the landing, then turned left to go up the stairs past the landing.
It was claustrophobic on the stairs. A wall to the left and right, and a short ceiling above. The distance between the walls was only two-thirds of my wingspan. There was one wooden handrail on the right side. I placed my right hand along the smooth wood and my left hand in my pocket with my phone that bounced with each step.
As my hand glided against the rail, I angled it just the right way so that it would slide smoothly off the end of the railing. But to my surprise, the railing didn’t end. This gave me pause. I stopped and looked over at the rail. It was too dark to see anything. Standing in place, I kept sliding my hand up, but the end wasn’t within my reach. I swear I was sober. I wasn’t on anything—I hadn’t even ingested anything since dinner. So, I figured I was just more tired than I realized. I kept walking up the stairs. After maybe five steps, I had to pause again, scanning the rail with my palm, but still no end. I started to go up the stairs at a faster pace. I heard my heels hit the wood under the carpet; I must’ve climbed the length of at least two of my staircases before I stopped again, catching my breath. Kneeling down on the step ahead, I waved my hands wildly in front of me, searching for the door at the top of the staircase, or the little strip of hardwood floor that slid under that door past the top step. As I looked up, I couldn’t even see the outline of light that would’ve come from upstairs. Where was the moonlight?
I pulled out my phone from my pocket. I tried to turn it on. I knew it was dead, but I also knew that the low battery icon would flash if I hit the power button. Once it flashed, I waved the light in front of me, but it barely shined on 3 inches of space ahead. It was no use. I shoved it back into my pocket.
I must’ve been hallucinating. Turning around, I started heading back downstairs, my left hand on the rail. One foot after the other, calmly bouncing downstairs. I knew I’d arrive at the landing eventually. At some point, I realized I must’ve descended more stairs than I had escalated. I paused and my breathing started to slowly spiral. I tried to get a grip on myself. But it was at this point I moved beyond rational thought. I clutched the handrail, worried it would disappear if I let go. At the same time, I wondered… maybe if I let go of the handrail, then I’d find the end of the stairs. I had to force myself to unhand it, but I did, and I went back up the stairs, my hands clenched into fists in my pockets. Walking and walking and walking, I was confident that each step would be the one to finally take me to the door out of there. I had to stop and take a deep breath. I turned and started jogging the other way. My calves were lightly burning. I figured if I was hallucinating this, I must’ve looked like a real idiot—running up and down the same ten steps over and over.
Eventually, I had to stop going down. It felt like I was hyperventilating. My knuckles must’ve been white in my pockets. A thought came to me. If I was close to the bottom of the stairs, then I could toss my phone in front of me. It would hit the wall at the landing. Surely the sound would wake me from this stupor. Taking my phone out of my pocket, my hand shook with nerves at my plan. I hit the power button so the low battery icon would flash again. Cocking my arm backward, I gave a swift toss. The screen was almost immediately enveloped in the darkness, and rather than hearing the phone bump into a wall, the sound rang rhythmically of the phone hitting step, then step, then step, then step until that sound too evaporated into the darkness. It sounded like it was still falling by the time I couldn’t hear it anymore.
My eyes were wide open, yet I still couldn’t see a thing. After standing frozen for what must’ve been a full minute, I sat on the step behind me and brought my knees to my chest. My mind ran rampant with what to do next. Sleep? There was no way I could with my heart beating this fast. Try to make a hole in the wall? If this was just a hallucination, mom certainly would not be happy about that in the morning. Try falling down the stairs? Possibly.
Before I was able to even keep thinking, I began hearing what sounded like whispers. Most of it I couldn’t quite make out. I wondered if it was another language. I thought I made out some words: “Trip.” “Fall.” “Weak.” “Useless.”
Suddenly, among the voices, I heard my name: “Mae…” I thought it was impossible for my heart to beat any faster, but I was wrong. I felt like it was about to beat up and out of my mouth. Some of the whispers sounded like laughs. Among the whispers came another voice, a very clear sentence in a language I understood too well: “Why don’t you try going up the stairs again?”
I stood up with a start and thought I heard something behind me. I turned quickly. For a moment, I thought I could see the figure of a man on a step above me. I nearly fell backward. But the outline disappeared almost as soon as I saw it. My mind must’ve been playing tricks on me in the dark. Despite being in the dark for what felt like minutes, my eyes simply would not adjust. It was still pure blackness. I reached out and the railing was still there, but that provided minimal, minimal comfort. I used my other hand to swipe in front of me, just to be sure there truly wasn’t anything there.
The words of my grandmother came to my mind as I stood petrified. She told us the story of 鬼打墙, the Gui Da Qiang. The name roughly translated to “ghosts building walls”. It’s a phenomenon where all seems normal to a wanderer, but slowly, the wanderer starts to circle back to where they started, and nothing can stop them from doing so repeatedly. It’s as if a ghost is building walls to keep the wanderer in a single space.
As a kid, I always wondered, why would the Gui Da Qiang do something like that to a poor wanderer? As I got older, the answer became clearer and clearer to me. When given the power, resources, and opportunity to torture someone, any creature will.
I tried to remember everything grandma had ever said about the Gui Da Qiang. “Don’t look over your shoulder.” It was too late for that. I had turned around multiple times at this point. “Look between your legs. The space is a window into the demon’s world.” I honestly considered this, but I was far too afraid of what I might see if I went through with it.
What happened if I never got off these stairs? Would my mom and brother find my corpse here on these steps? Did I even still exist? Or had I vanished from my own dimension? Would I ever see my friends or family again? Hear them again? Touch them again?
Ultimately, I decided I would slide down the stairs. I thought about falling down, but I figured I’d break a bone, if not die. I could get on my back and slide down as if it were a water slide. It would be uncomfortable, but eventually, I would hit the landing, right?
I assumed the position, crossing my arms as I lay down on the steps. I took a deep breath, ready to send myself down. But just as I was about to shove off, I heard something. Lurching. It hit the left wall, then the right. Soon, I could hear it breathing. It was heavy, heavy breathing. Whatever it was, it was much bigger than me. A bear? No, it must’ve been bigger. I could hear it coming up the steps. It was definitely walking on two legs, despite how heavy it sounded. As it took its steps, I heard something else… clanking… the clanking of metal, like armor. Or chains. I slowly sat up as the footsteps continued. At a rhythmic pace, the footsteps started getting faster. I slowly and clumsily scrambled to my feet, and I started sprinting up the stairs. I was running and running and running. I could feel my hair blowing behind me. The steps behind me kept getting faster in their own time. I didn’t know how long I was running, but I was sweating and wheezing, and my muscles were on fire. Eventually, I started scrambling on all fours up the stairs like some kind of ape. I collapsed on the steps. I clutched the carpeted stairs between my fingers as I sobbed, not ready to face the hands and teeth of whatever was pursuing me.
In an instant, past the sobs, I heard the words in a whisper: “Inside out…”
And I remembered my grandmother’s words. When trapped by a Gui Da Qiang, you turn your clothes inside out. As the breathing down the steps grew even heavier, I frantically dragged my shirt off my body, turned it inside out, and pulled it back on.
I closed my eyes tightly. The footsteps sounded like canon fire before stopping right next to me, and the creature’s breath glossed over my cheek.
Through my eyelids, black turned to red.
The breathing on my face disappeared. My own breathing was normal again. The cheeks that were a moment ago tearstained were now dry. My muscles felt relaxed. There was no trace of sweat on my forehead. I opened my eyes slowly. I saw the banister on the wall across from the one I leaned against. I looked up and to my left. There my brother stood at the open door atop the stairs, hand on the light switch, groggily asking, “Are you okay?”
I foolishly looked back down where I saw my phone laying in the center of the landing. But I didn’t go back for it. I ran up just five steps and hugged my little brother around his neck. He was surprised. “What time is it?” I begged to know. He showed me his watch which read 1:03 a.m. Just one minute after I’d left the couch.
I scurried to my room. Though I was unsettled, I felt exhausted, and I managed to get to sleep quickly.
The next morning, I turned on all the lights in the house and grabbed a little flashlight out of the hallway closet just to be safe. I ran downstairs, snatched my phone and laptop, then ran back up. I didn’t hang out in the basement so much after that.
I sat at the kitchen table waiting for my bread in the toaster. I opened my laptop. There was a new email from an employer. Before I got the chance to open it, my brother came in and sat across from me, preparing some cereal. I suddenly became curious, and asked him, “Why did you come to the basement door last night anyway?”
“Something woke me up. For a few minutes, I heard really loud stomping coming from the stairs.”
Credit: Jonah Ross Wardell
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