Stair Riser Quotes

The carpeting on the stair risers caught, racing up to the first-floor level as if to tell dreadful good news.

It was also my violent heart that broke, falling down the front hall stairs. It was also a message I never spoke, calling, riser after riser, who cares...

There were nineteen wide steps down to the lobby. She had counted them enough times to know. Nineteen carpeted stair risers and nary a Jack crouching on any one of them.

...Another part of the ritual was to ascend with closed eyes. 'Step, step, step,' came my mother's voice as she led me up - and sure enough, the surface of the next tread would receive the blind child's confident foot; all one had to do was lift it a little higher than usual, so as to avoid stubbing one's toe against the riser. This slow, somewhat somnambulistic ascension in self-engendered darkness held obvious delights. The keenest of them was not knowing when the last step would come. At the top of the stairs, one's foot would be automatically lifted to the deceptive call of 'Step,' and then, with a momentary sense of exquisite panic, with a wild contraction of muscles, would sink into the phantasm of a step, padded, as it were, with the infinitely elastic stuff of its own nonexistence.

The front door banged open at that moment to admit a disheveled James Fairchild. He was like a vision from Bedlam: his blond hair stood on end, and his neckcloth was missing. He looked wildly at Anna. “Rebecca?” At that moment, as if in answer from on high, there came the wavering wail of a newborn baby. James Fairchild’s expression changed from frantic to dumbstruck. Without waiting for Anna’s answer, he bounded up the stairs, taking the risers three at a time. Anna noticed as he passed out of sight that he was wearing only one stocking on his feet.

Remember when the Kerns put striped carpeting on their stairs and kept falling down them because they could tell where the edges were?" Aggie laughed. And glancing up Jane saw her shake her head just slightly and nearly imperceptible hug. Apparently Aggie had decided, as so many women had before her, that being angry with Duncan was just not worth the effort.

But as we maneuvered my wolfdog up the stairs, riser by riser, the dark thoughts returned. I’d been targeted. Someone had come for me in the night. And there could only be one explanation. I didn’t know how or why. I couldn’t fathom the connection. But the truth was as plain as the smashed nails on Cooper’s swollen paw. The Zodiac kidnapper was now after me.

I remember the look on Barrons’s face when I stumbled, horrified, down the stairs, great black wings trailing the risers, and he must have felt what happened, because he was rushing up the stairs to find me.