The Stone Child (20 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
“Mom!” Harris cried again.
Then all the lights went out. Downstairs. Upstairs. Eddie’s body stiffened as Maggie clutched at his arm. He could barely see her face.
“Mom! She’s behind you!” Harris called as he started running toward the side door.
“Harris!” Maggie shouted.
“Don’t go in there!” Eddie called to Harris’s running silhouette. Then, before he could stop himself, he chased after his friend. Maggie followed close behind. He heard the screen door slam. Eddie followed the sound, yanking the door open. Maggie caught it from behind him. She held it open as Eddie stared up into the darkness. He could hear Harris tripping up the steps. He had to turn off his brain so that he would not imagine Harris falling into the cold arms of the looming silhouette.
“Mom! I’m coming!” Harris cried.
Despite being unable to see, Eddie took the stairs two at a time. Using the handrail, he yanked his way to the top and flung himself through the doorway.
But the overhead light in the kitchen blinded him.
Eddie found Harris in the middle of the room hugging Frances. Harris heaved sobs into his mother’s neck, and
Frances glanced at Eddie, as if to say,
What are you kids up to?
Maggie bumped into Eddie’s back as she came up the stairs, pushing him forward into the kitchen. Eddie caught a glimpse out the window. The town green was lit up as usual, as were all the buildings on Center Street.
The Woman in Black was gone. It was as if she had never even been here.
“Honey, what’s the matter?” said Frances, pushing Harris away so she could see his face. “This is
not
the Spanish Inquisition. I only asked if you were hungry.”
Harris turned away, wiping at his eyes, embarrassed. “Are we hungry, you guys?” he said. Eddie and Maggie nodded slowly. Turning back toward his mother, Harris said, “Can they stay for dinner? We’re working on a project tonight.” He choked back a sob, finally composing himself. “Hopefully, we’ll be done soon.”
“Of course,” said Frances, looking concerned. She went to the sink and turned on the faucet. Filling a saucepan with water, she glanced over her shoulder. “For goodness’ sake, Harris, I had no idea you took your homework so
seriously
.”
In Harris’s bedroom, they placed
The Enigmatic Manuscript
and their translations in the middle of the floor and sat in a triangle around them. They stared at the book in silence for a whole minute before Maggie said, “Whose turn is it?”
“If we keep reading, is she going to come after us again?” said Harris, still shaken. “Is she going to come after my
mom
again?”
Maggie picked at her fingernail. “She might want us to think she will. But I have a feeling that we should keep reading anyway.”
“Even if she tries to …,” Eddie started. But he couldn’t think of how to end the sentence. “Tries to …”
“Tries to
scare
us?” Maggie finished. “That’s all she’s been doing so far.”
Eddie flinched. “Wait a second,” he said. “You’re right. All she
has
been doing is scaring us. Like her bark is worse than her bite?”
“But
barking
is not all she can do,” said Harris. “You read
The Wish of the Woman in Black
yourself. She’s evil.”
“No. She’s angry,” said Maggie. “But if she’s so powerful, why hasn’t she turned us into little black piles of goo, like she’s so good at?”
“Maggie!” Eddie said, leaning forward and clutching her arm. “She might be listening.”
“So what?” said Maggie, yanking herself away. “I think if she really could stop us from reading this book, she’d have done it already, instead of performing these little parlor tricks. Flickering lights? I mean … are we really that scared of the dark?”
“Yes!” said Eddie and Harris at the same time.
“This
is why I don’t read these kinds of books!” said Maggie. “Being scared makes you act like an idiot.”
“Hey,” said Eddie, “you weren’t the one she spoke to. Maybe if you’d been there last night, you’d understand. …”
“I’m here now,” Maggie answered quietly, “and
we
need to finish reading the book.” She picked it up and handed it to Eddie. She smiled and said, “We can do it. I know we can.”
… that was before the nightmares began
.
I would tumble from my bed, screaming into the night. The darkness coaxed me back to bed, but as soon as I placed my head on the pillow, the awful visions returned—children with no faces, cities full of gravestones, hands clawing at me from behind my wallpaper, shadows that tied me to the floor—and all the while, the sound of the Woman’s laughter taunted me
.
Finally, I stopped sleeping at all. During the day, I was a zombie. Since putting away the pendant, writing was impossible, so sometimes, I pulled it from the desk drawer in the basement, wondering if I should simply write the Woman’s story. But I had promised myself I wouldn’t. At that point, the thought of another missing child on my conscience was enough to deter me from using the pendant to write
.
But I was certainly tempted. If I gave the Woman what she wanted, she might leave me alone. After that, I could throw the pendant away, bury it somewhere, hide it. Deep down, I knew it was not so simple
.
The longer I waited, the worse the dreams became. Soon, whenever I closed my eyes, for even a few seconds, the most horrible, violent, and disgusting images flashed across the backs of my eyelids, like monster movies in a run-down movie theater. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take. I had become short-tempered and irritable. I began to suspect that I was losing my mind. If I didn’t do something soon, not only would my few friends in town stop wanting to be near me anymore, but I wouldn’t be able to function in public at all. Everywhere I looked I imagined some new horror. What I could see most clearly was my future—locked in a padded cell
.
Eddie stopped reading. In the ceiling, the light had started to flicker.
Maggie shook her head. “Keep reading, Eddie. She only wants us to stop.” She looked toward the ceiling, as if the Woman was watching them from up there. “But we’re not going to!” she shouted.
Shaken, Eddie slowly turned away from the overhead light and looked at the page. He steadied his hand and continued to read.
On June first, I stood on the hill next to my house and called out over the orchard, “I will write you into a story! But you must promise to leave me alone. And you cannot hurt anyone!” From the woods came my
reply—a flurry of black-winged birds rose into the blue sky like ink bleeding onto blank paper. Their cawing sounded triumphant, like a jeering crowd at a baseball game. I nodded and went inside. At my desk, I opened a new notebook. Using the key, which had supposedly once held shut the gates of Eden, I wrote the first paragraph of what would become
The Wish of the Woman in Black.
“
In the town of Coxglenn, children feared the fall of night. It wasn’t the darkness that frightened them—it was sleep. For when they lay in bed and closed their eyes, she watched them
.“
I wrote for a week straight. The horrible visions finally went away. I woke early in the morning and worked, only breaking for lunch and coffee, until at night, I fell into bed, exhausted. After several chapters, I realized the situation was more complicated than I’d originally imagined. The story was the most terrifying yet—the Woman the most dangerous of all my creatures. Her anger was unrelenting and uncontrollable. I could clearly see where her story was heading. In my mind, I could see the book’s last page. The town of Coxglenn and everyone in it would be reduced to a lake of quivering sludge. In her story, goodness would not prevail. She would not allow it. Not only would her book be terrible, but if I allowed her to come through the stone child’s gate, she would be unstoppable. I knew she would destroy whatever she touched, and she would not stop until Gatesweed, and the world beyond the town’s borders, lay in ruins
.
Out of the corner of his eye, Eddie saw a shadow moving near the closet door, but when he looked, there was nothing there.
“Eddie!” said Harris. “Don’t stop reading!”
“Sorry. I thought I saw …,” Eddie started to say. But then he looked down at
The Enigmatic Manuscript
. If he concentrated hard enough, the rest of the room went away. Only the story remained. “Never mind,” he said. “Where was I?”
“
Ruins,”
Maggie whispered.
I knew I could not finish writing her story. If I did, I wouldn’t be able to face the consequences. Instead, I would have to face her consequences. Unless I could somehow stop her. But how?
Then I thought—if the manuscript allows these creatures to come into our world, I must destroy the manuscript
.
I tried erasing it. I tried burning it. I tried soaking it in water, in alcohol, in gasoline. I tried cutting it to pieces. I even tried to scribble over the words using the tip of the pendant itself. But nothing worked—somehow, the magic of the archangel’s key had made the pages indestructible, everlasting. I tested my theory with the other manuscripts in my basement, but they were all the same. Permanently marked. Like a stain I could not wash away
.
Now that I had stopped putting her story on paper, my visions of the Woman in Black were not confined to my dreams. Everywhere I looked, I could see her, feel her. It seemed that the unfinished manuscript allowed the Woman in Black to appear in Gatesweed, even though
the gate was not yet open to her. She could not physically manifest in our world, but it was like I had pulled back the curtain on the window into her world. She enjoyed showing herself to me—reminding me of my promise with the threat of her presence
.
“Maybe we were right!” said Maggie. “I think she’s still only
looking
at us through the … the window, trying to scare us. She can’t hurt us. She’s
not
real like the other monsters. Not yet anyway.”
“So last night,” said Eddie, “in my parents’ bedroom—”
“It was an illusion,” said Maggie. “Just like what happened downstairs a few minutes ago. Harris, your mother didn’t see what we saw. The lights in town never really went out. The Woman in Black only made us believe they did.”
From the corner of the room came a low moan that slowly crumbled into an angry growl.
“Leave us
alone,”
said Harris, through his teeth.
Eddie refused to look.
Leaning forward, all three of them continued the translation.
It was then I realized I needed a new plan. I was in a mess of my own making. I had been so selfish and needed to fix the situation. Simply putting away my pen would not be enough. If I stopped writing her story, the Woman would drive me into madness and then wait for someone else to finish the job. Since I had started this catastrophe
,
I knew I would end it. Rather than wait for her to find me, I would find her
.
But first, I needed to open the gate
.
It took me a day to figure out how, but once I thought of it, the answer seemed obvious. I would write
my own story
using the pendant, the same way I had written all of my books. When I finished, the statue would glow blue and the portal would open for me. I would go through the gate, into the dark realm, and put an end to the Woman in Black before she had a chance to follow me home
.
Eddie …
, a voice said from the corner of the room.
Trembling, Eddie tried to ignore everything but
The Enigmatic Manuscript
. As he focused on the book and continued to work, the distractions began to diminish, as if the Woman in Black had no power if he simply didn’t acknowledge her presence.
In order for my plan to work, I needed to prepare. As I grasped the silver chain, I was certain that I would not be able to take anything with me—not the book, and most certainly not the pendant
.
I knew I needed to write my story, but in leaving it behind, I understood how dangerous the book would be if it fell into the wrong hands. It would act as a set of indestructible instructions, a record of what I had done. Anyone who found and read it would know how to open the gate too. It had been easy enough for me to do it, even unwittingly. And if I failed to destroy the Woman in Black, if she destroyed
me first, then there would still be the possibility for her to come through. I decided to write my story in a way that would be difficult to read and leave no evidence. I would need to write the story in code
.
Grabbing the pendant, I hastily jotted down a code key in the blank space where I had stopped writing
The Wish of the Woman in Black.
I opened to the first page of an empty notebook from the local bookstore and drew the chet symbol, as usual. Then, using the new alphabet to translate as I wrote, I began my own story
.
Only later did I realize my mistake. In using the pendant to write the code, I’d made it permanent. I knew I’d have to finish quickly, then hide
The Wish of the Woman in Black
and the code key somewhere no one would ever find it in my absence. A separate place, away from the book containing my own story. I decided to dig a hole underneath a stone in my basement. It seemed appropriate, like a character had done in
The Witch’s Doom.
After that, I would need to hide my own story and the pendant where they would be protected. The idea for the perfect place came to me from another of my books
.
The lake
.
If anyone ever came close to the water, just like in
The Rumor of the Haunted Nunnery
, the dogs would chase him away. The animals would guard my two relics—the pendant and my book. After trying to destroy
The Wish of the Woman in Black
, I already knew that the water would not hurt my new book’s pages. If the pendant eventually became oxidized and rusted, then no one would ever be able to open the gate again, though I doubted such good fortune
.
I buried
The Wish of the Woman in Black
under the stone in my basement. That night, I brought the still-unfinished story of my life, the pendant, a canvas bag, and a metal box with me into the woods
.
In the clearing, my flashlight swept across the stone girl’s face. Ignoring her, I made my way down the hill toward the lake. The water reflected the stars. I placed the bag onto the shore and reached inside. I pulled out the pendant and the notebook. I turned to the end and began to write. I have been doing so ever since. …
I’ve written everything on the past two pages only moments ago. Here I stand on the edge of this nameless lake in the middle of these nameless woods. I’ve finally caught up to myself
.
When I finish this last paragraph, I will stand up and place the notebook and the pendant into the bag. I will place the bag in the box. After that is done, I will close the box and throw it into the lake as far as my strength will allow. I will watch the box sink. Finally, I will climb the hill toward the clearing where the statue will be waiting, I hope, to let me through. What happens after that is a story for when I return … if I return. Even though this isn’t over, I must write
The End
or it won’t work. So here goes. …
The End
.