Five high school friends go on a camping trip in the forest, where they find a mysterious staircase leading to nowhere. One friend walks up the staircase and is never seen again. The staircase then disappears.

Twenty years later, the staircase reappears and the friends re-unite to attempt to find their lost friend.

This had the potential to be a suspenseful, thrilling edge-of-the-seat read, but the lengthy conversations and flashbacks interrupted the flow of the plot. Parts of the book were repetitive, like when the friends were moving through the various rooms and their rehashing of the past, without revealing any new information.