The Elevator
by William Sleator
About the author
William Sleator was an American author best known for young-adult science fiction and psychological suspense that takes an ordinary fear — a dark room, a strange neighbour, a slow elevator — and stretches it until it becomes genuinely unsettling, without ever resorting to graphic horror.
What happens in the story
Martin, thin and unathletic, lives with his father on the eighteenth floor of an old apartment building with a slow, dimly lit elevator he has always been afraid of. When his father mocks his fear, Martin forces himself to start using the elevator regularly. On several rides he encounters the same large, silent woman in a shabby green coat — and each time, her presence feels slightly more wrong: she seems to know which floor he's going to, and to be waiting for him in places she couldn't have reached in time.
Rattled, Martin starts taking the stairs instead to avoid her — and on the dark stairwell he falls and breaks his leg. Now on crutches, unable to manage eighteen flights of stairs, he has no choice but to go back to the one place he was trying to escape: the elevator, and possibly, the woman.
Theme: what the story is really about
Sleator never confirms whether the woman is dangerous, supernatural, or simply an unremarkable neighbour that Martin's anxiety has turned into something menacing — and that refusal to explain is the point. The story is really about how avoidance backfires: Martin's attempt to dodge his fear (the stairs) is exactly what injures him and traps him with it. It's also a quiet comment on his father's "just get over it" attitude, which pushes Martin toward danger instead of helping him face it safely.
Exam-style questions and model answers
Q. Why does Martin start taking the stairs, and what happens as a result?
He takes the stairs to avoid further encounters with the unsettling woman in the elevator. In the dark, unfamiliar stairwell he falls and breaks his leg — the very avoidance strategy meant to keep him safe is what injures him.
Q. Why does Sleator never reveal who the woman really is?
Leaving her unexplained keeps the tension centred on Martin's fear rather than on any external monster — the suspense comes from what the reader (and Martin) can't be sure of, not from a confirmed threat.
Q. What does the ending suggest about facing one's fears?
That fear isn't neatly "conquered" just by being forced to confront it — Martin is pushed back into the elevator not because he has overcome his fear, but because circumstance leaves him no other option, leaving the ending deliberately unresolved.