The Stone Child (19 page)
Authors: Dan Poblocki
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Action & Adventure, #Literary Criticism, #Ghost Stories, #Monsters, #Juvenile Fiction, #Children's Books, #Children: Grades 4-6, #Ages 9-12 Fiction, #Horror & Ghost Stories, #Fantasy & Magic, #Children's Literature, #Action & Adventure - General, #Horror stories, #Books & Reading, #Mysteries & Detective Stories, #Mysteries; Espionage; & Detective Stories, #Supernatural, #Authors, #Juvenile Horror, #Books & Libraries, #Books and reading
As the books continued to sell, Nathaniel began to read reports in the newspapers of strange occurrences in Gatesweed. Several pets had disappeared under mysterious circumstances. A few children claimed to have seen unusual animals wandering through the woods near Nathaniel’s driveway. Several people actually asserted that these animals had attacked them. A twelve-year-old boy named Jeremy Quakerly vanished from his bedroom in the middle of the night. Finally, the body of an elderly schoolteacher was found in the middle of a cornfield on one of the county roads past the mills. The incident was ruled an accident, but a rumor spread throughout Gatesweed that on the death certificate, the coroner had listed the cause of death as a fall from a great height. She had died in her bathrobe.
Nathaniel heard some people claim that these reports echoed what he had written in his stories, but he convinced himself they were coincidences. Or he attempted to, at least. Nathaniel understood that any writer has his share of critics,
so he tried to ignore the cruel looks and harsh whispers that followed him in town.
He sometimes wandered through the woods behind the apple orchard, exploring the clearing where the mysterious statue stood. There, he contemplated his fortune. Was there validity to the rumors? What was he actually doing when he used the pen to write his stories? Was the legend of the archangel’s key actually true? Other than the fact that the piece of metal could write on paper, did it actually hold mystical properties like the scholars said it should? After all, a pencil could write on paper too. Nathaniel would stand at the edge of the statue’s clearing and shake his head in disbelief. He told himself that this world was meant to remain mysterious. Deep down, though, he believed it was easier to choose ignorance.
Everything changed one afternoon, years later, when I wandered near the Nameless Lake. Of course, I’d seen the small body of water before, having used it as a set piece for the end of
The Rumor of the Haunted Nunnery.
That day, I stepped onto the pebbly shoreline, allowing my boots to send small ripples out into the water, something I hadn’t done before. Some time later, several dogs leapt from the water and chased me halfway through the woods. By the time I’d made it home, my mind was racing. I couldn’t fathom what I’d seen. All the reports I’d read in the newspapers, all the unsolved crimes I’d dismissed as coincidence—the missing pets, the strange wild animal attacks, the child’s
disappearance from his bedroom, the schoolteacher’s death—came flooding back. People in Gatesweed had whispered for years that I was responsible for the odd happenings around town. Now I’d seen it with my own eyes. Apparently, at least, my monster lake-dogs were real
.
How could that be? All my doubts about the pendant were suddenly half erased. If the legend of the key was real, was it possible that using the pendant to write my books had somehow made the dogs appear in the woods behind my house? Was it possible that some of the other monsters from my books were real too? If the stone child supposedly marked a place where the fabric between the worlds is thin, maybe I had caused the fabric to rip? If that was true, was I responsible for everything that had happened?
I immediately went and hid the pendant in my basement. I needed to get away from it for a while, stop writing, take a break and think about everything
.
Several days later, I was lying on my couch for an afternoon nap when I heard a noise that sounded like papers being shuffled. I realized that something was standing in the doorway to my kitchen. At first, I thought it was something in my eye, a piece of dust or an eyelash, but when I rubbed there, nothing happened. A dark patch filled the space where there should have been a stove and a sinkful of dirty dishes. I sat up as the dark patch took form. It was an old woman. Shadows swirled around her body like smoke. Her hair lapped at her face in waves as if a slight breeze blew through my house. Her mouth did not move, but I heard her voice clearly. It was old and reminded me of dust
.
The Woman touched the door frame in which she stood. The door grew and the kitchen behind it disappeared into the flickering glow of an unseen fire. This place was no longer my house. I heard wings flapping and insects scuttling through the shadows. The walls grew dark and dripped with moisture
.
The Woman’s eye sockets were black holes, but they focused on me intently
.
“
Who are you?” I asked. She didn’t answer me, but somehow I knew her. “Lilith?” I whispered. She smiled but said nothing to confirm my suspicion. Still, I understood what she wanted from me. She wished for me to release her—like I had released her children, I realized now
.
“
If I write you into a story, will you exist here, like the dogs that chased me through the woods?” I stumbled in my thoughts, afraid of the answer to my question. I remembered the reports of the unsolved crimes. I was terrified by the possibility of my own unwitting guilt. “Like—like the others I wrote about?
”
She showed me the statue in the dark woods. The stone child glimmered, filling the clearing with cold blue radiance. In a burst of light, a pack of dogs surrounded the statue. With their eyes glowing red, the dogs dashed into the shadows. All at once, I saw images of other monsters manifesting in the clearing beside the illuminated girl. I now understood completely how the portal worked. As I finished each story, the statue glowed, the gate opened, and the creatures emerged
.
The Woman spoke. “The key plays games with me.” Her dark voice jabbed into my chest, like a needle and thread. “Lost and found. Years
passed. It brought you here to me. You have written the stories of my children. Now that they have all come through the gate in the woods, it is time for you to begin another story … mine.”
“
And if I don’t?” I dared to speak
.
The woman’s face changed—in it I saw myself locked in a dark room, water rising from the floor below; I saw myself in the middle of a haunted city, pale faces staring at me through grease-smudged storefronts; I saw myself falling into a pit as wide as the ocean and blacker than night, from which rose the steady screaming of a million tortured souls. The Woman reached out to me and laughed, her voice rising like a flurry of ravens swirling into a dark, dead sky
.
I woke up on my couch. Sweating. My chest hurt. I was breathing hard, and my legs felt heavy. The Woman was gone. My house looked the same as always. I wondered what had just happened. Had I been dreaming? Was I going crazy?
I sat on the couch and contemplated my predicament. If I didn’t listen to her, would she haunt me forever with such visions? If what I had seen was not a dream, as the evidence overwhelmingly suggested, then I was, in fact, guilty for releasing the monsters, the legendary Lilim, one at a time from their purgatorial prisons. Simply holding the pendant had equipped me with the unconscious knowledge of how to use it. I was certain now that the pendant had brought me to Gatesweed in the first place. When I used the pendant to write my stories, it acted like a key. Each story had opened a door in the woods, where the stone child held her empty book, like she had when she stood beside Eden’s gate. This new door led to places where the monsters were real. No wonder the
old Romanian woman had wanted to get rid of the pendant! How many cursed hands had it passed through over the years? To realize I held such power in my fingertips was more terrifying than my worst nightmare
.
I thought about what I should do. I was certainly willing to put down the pendant, to stop writing, or at least try to write something without monsters in it. I had never been able to do so before, but I was older now, with more experience. I had become a different person. Hadn’t I?
However, if I refused to tell her story, would the Woman send me more bad dreams? Was that the worst she could do?
At that point, I was certain I could handle it. That was before—
The lights in the back of the store flickered, and Maggie stopped reading. The three kids looked toward the door in the rear wall. It was open a crack. No one said anything, but Eddie knew what they were all feeling. The pen in Maggie’s hand was shaking. Harris clutched the table. Eddie’s leg started to twitch. The big bookshelf on the left side of the door obscured the overhead light, so it was impossible to see inside the storage room. Blackness gaped through the crack in the doorway.
“Mom?” called Harris, his voice shaky.
“I thought you said she was upstairs,” said Eddie.
“Is there someone back there?” Maggie whispered.
Eddie and Harris glanced at each other.
“You know what?” said Harris. “I sort of hope so. Because if someone is back there, that means that something isn’t.”
“Maybe it’s nothing,” said Eddie. “Sometimes in old buildings, lights flicker by themselves. Right?”
“Right,” said Harris and Maggie, sounding too enthusiastic, as if they were trying to convince themselves.
“But maybe we should finish reading the book somewhere else?” said Maggie.
The lights fluttered again, briefly. Eddie remembered what had happened in his bedroom the night before. He shuttled his chair closer to Maggie. He didn’t want to finish reading the book at all.
“I think that’s a good idea. Let’s go upstairs,” said Harris, sliding his chair back and standing up.
The lights in the back of the store suddenly went out. The only lights on now were the two table lamps near the front door.
Eddie knocked his own chair backward as he stood. It banged against the hardwood floor, sending shivers across his skin. Then he saw Maggie’s face as she stared toward the street, and his shivers became an arctic chill.
“You guys …,” she said, nodding toward the town green.
When Eddie turned around, he saw only his reflection in the window. “What’s wrong?” he said.
“The lights in the park … They’ve gone out too,” said Harris.
Eddie glanced toward the back of the store. It might have been his imagination, but he thought he could see movement through the open door. He turned around, refusing to look.
“Not only the park,” said Maggie, squinting, “but it looks like the whole town has gone dark.”
“We need to get out of here,” said Harris. He shoved
The Enigmatic Manuscript
under his arm and grabbed the notebook and pen. “Now.”
Eddie nodded. He snatched his book bag and ran toward the front door. As he reached for the knob, Maggie ran up beside him and tugged on his sleeve.
“Wait,” she said. “We don’t know what’s out there.”
Suddenly, Eddie heard a familiar voice in the back of the store.
Why?
it said in a soft, singsong manner.
Eddie … why do you want to hurt me …?
“Do—do you guys hear that?” said Eddie.
“Hear what?” said Harris.
The two table lamps in the store began to flicker as well. Over Maggie’s shoulder, Eddie saw someone moving through the shadows, reaching out toward him. His voice caught in his throat as he turned around and threw the front door open into the night. Then he ran.
As he hurtled across the front porch and down the stairs, he heard his friends behind him. They leapt from the last step
onto the sidewalk, hopped over the curb, and skidded into the middle of the street.
When they turned around, they saw that the only light in the entire town spilled dimly from the windows of The Enigmatic Manuscript. All Eddie could see of the other buildings on Center Street were silent silhouettes against a starless sky.
Inside, the store now seemed empty. Those vague arms Eddie had seen reaching from the shadows were gone. Eddie glanced over his shoulder to the park.
Could she have followed them out of the store? Could she be with them out here in the dark street?
“What’s happening?” said Maggie.
“I heard her talking to me,” said Eddie. “She asked me why I want to hurt her.”
“I thought I heard someone talking in the store too,” she said. “But I figured it was my imagination.”
“The Woman in Black,” said Harris, crossing his arms over his chest. His voice started to rise. “She’s coming for all of us now?”
“We need to stay calm,” said Eddie. “We still have some light left. If we stay quiet, maybe we can sit here and—”
“Are you crazy?” said Harris. “You want to sit in the middle of the cold dark street and keep reading this stupid thing? No way! I want to find someplace nice and bright to hide.”
“That’s it,” said Maggie quietly.
“What do you mean?” said Harris. “What’s it?”
The light from the store gave Maggie’s eyes a fierce glow. “She keeps asking Eddie why he wants to hurt her. But
why
does she think he’s hurting her? What have we been doing for the past couple days?”
Eddie and Harris glanced at each other. “All we’ve been doing is reading Nathaniel Olmstead’s book,” said Harris.
“Right!” Maggie pointed at the book Harris had tucked under his arm.
The Enigmatic Manuscript. “
When Eddie was translating the book last night, he only got so far because she interrupted him. Just like we were interrupted right now.” Maggie thought about that. “Maybe she’s afraid of what we’ll learn if we finish reading the book.” She smiled. “That only makes me want to read it more.”
The lights inside the store began to flicker again, this time dimming almost all the way out.
“We won’t be able to read anything if the lights go out,” said Eddie. He huddled closer to his friends.
Harris cried out, pointing toward the apartment above the store. The light turned on in the kitchen window. Frances’s silhouette appeared. She raised her hands to the glass, as if trying to block the glare to see outside. Then she lifted the pane and leaned over the windowsill. She didn’t seem to notice that the entire town had fallen into darkness. “Are you kids hungry?” she called to them.
“Mom!” shouted Harris. “Watch out!”
Behind Frances, another silhouette loomed. It rose and expanded, filling the bright kitchen window with shadow until the room went dark.