As he put his first foot onto the bottom step of the staircase, a piece of the stair crumpled beneath Dustin and he felt the unmistakable lurching in the pit of his stomach that comes with a swift drop. Yet, he had only stumbled and hardly at all. Still, something felt completely off about the staircase; as if he was certain that he would melt into the steps as soon as he might begin the climb. His back foot was his anchor and he refused to take it off the reassuring comfort of the solid floor until he was certain of what he was about to step onto. He closed his eyes and took a breath, waiting as if for the proper moment to reveal itself.
However, a small voice inside his head told him that time was quickly dwindling away and the minutes were too few to waste in meaningless waiting. He gripped the balustrade for support and, closing his eyes and saying a brief prayer, he shifted his weight to his front foot. While the stone step seemed to crack and shift with his growing weight, it seemed solid all the same. Dustin walked up the steps as though they were covered in eggshells, while gripping the balustrade hard enough to feel it pinching his fingertips. His mouth became dry and his breathing, forced, as he slowly took one step at a time, waiting for an inexplicably certain doom to befall him.
Emerald shimmered in the corners of his eyes and he became aware of the candles on the wall. They ran along every fifteen stairs and their alluring green flames swayed hypnotically in an enticing dance that had made Dustin stop and lose himself in watching, at least three times. He kept one hand on the rail and one eye on the rippling candles as he continued onward, and he had only stopped doing either of them when he had come across the first door. It was a heavy wooden door, much like the last that he had passed through, and it had popped up some one hundred and twelve steps up.
There was no landing or leveling off of any kind at the foot of this door. It had simply just seemed to be a natural part of the wall, almost beyond notice; Dustin certainly nearly missed it. He grabbed the door’s handle and tried to push it open but the door wouldn’t budge. He put his shoulder into it and the door still remained firmly in place. The door started to feel less like wood and more like solid stone, just like the walls around it, so Dustin had nearly chocked it up to being a figment of his own imagination. However, thick ooze seeped out from beneath the door that had not been really there; it had the dark crimson appearance of blood, yet it reeked of gasoline, and as it ran down onto the steps below him, the steps had dissolved away into blowing sand.
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