The ladder had a missing rung, leaving a dark hollow where a tooth should have been. In that gap there was a quiet invitation to stumble, a reminder that one small step can matter a lot. This was the scene at a rural hotel where a couple recently spent a few days, a place that left a mark beyond the ordinary. Upon arrival, guests were warned about the ascent to the second floor.
Be careful in the first part of going up to the second floor, one step is missing. The moth had eaten it and they were making a replacement. The wooden ladder groaned with the weight of each footfall, as if a tired creature bearing the weather’s memories. When it was removed, it seemed to suffer more than before, a quiet lament that touched the nerves of anyone who relied on it to reach the rooms above. The missing step did not seem a simple absence but a wound, a black sore on the surface that suggested the illness spreading through the building. The gap felt less like a gap and more like a mouth missing a part, yet the problem stretched further, beyond a single missing piece. It resembled an infected ulcer, a wound that reached into the spirit of the place. The ladder, in this sense, appeared to have a soul wound, not bent by accident but marked by a deeper, almost psychotic unease about its own existence.
The wife of the observer wondered at his reluctance to return to the hotel whenever they settled in for a quiet spell of rest and reading. They each bought several books to keep in the room, choosing volumes that promised escape or distraction, even if the first choice proved tiresome. One night, about three o’clock in the morning, the observer rose and walked toward the stairwell drawn by the glow of a phone held in hand. A light cast onto the bottom of the shaft revealed the presence of a very old dog, lifting its gaze as if to meet the witness, or perhaps to plead for a view into the unfamiliar. The animal’s groan accompanied every hesitant step as they climbed, a somber chorus that seemed to inhabit the stairs themselves. It felt as though the animal belonged to the house, a remnant spirit tethered to that hollow where the rung had vanished and the moth had gnawed away at time itself. When the visitors finally prepared to leave, they asked the reception about the dog, only to be assured that no dog resided there and no creature waited in the dark beyond the door.
In the end, the experience unfolded as more than a simple memory of a faulty staircase. It became a meditation on the way space carries traces of pain, and how a structure can reflect the inner weather of those who inhabit it. The missing step, the moth’s bite, the creaking wood, and the nocturnal vision of the old dog coalesced into a single narrative about place, impermanence, and the stubborn character of a building that refuses to be merely a backdrop for a few days away. The hotel remained, but its stairs—once a path to rooms and routines—stood as a quiet witness to something unsettled, a reminder that even in travel there can be a tension between comfort and the unknown that lies just beyond the next step.