15
Eddie was late for school the next morning.
In class, Ms. Phelps called on him for the third time in twenty minutes, and he had to admit, once again, he didn’t know the answer. He hadn’t done any of the homework. He didn’t blame Ms. Phelps for being upset-how could she possibly know that last night he had been haunted by a malicious spirit who once upon a time might have been banished from the Garden of Eden, and who might have been responsible for the disappearance of Nathaniel Olmstead? Of course, he didn’t try to explain this. He knew she wouldn’t understand. He would save his explanations until he met up with Harris and Maggie during lunch.
After class, Eddie found them sitting near the windows in the far corner of the cafeteria. He was late because he’d wanted to make photocopies of his translation so they could read it themselves. He’d convinced Mr. Lyons to help him by volunteering to reshelf books next week-if he was still alive…
Neither Harris nor Maggie looked like they had slept much, but when they saw him approaching, they perked up. He knew they’d be excited to hear about his translation, but he didn’t know how to explain everything else that had happened.
After falling down the stairs, Eddie refused to sleep in his own bedroom. Even shoved between his parents, Eddie’s mind had churned with frightening images all night long. He hadn’t slept either.
He slumped into the chair next to Harris and across from Maggie.
“So?” said Harris, taking a bite of his peanut butter sandwich. “How did it go? Do you know what happened to Nathaniel Olmstead?”
Eddie shook his head. “I didn’t finish.”
“Didn’t finish?” said Maggie. “Why not?”
Eddie took a deep breath and told them everything that had happened, starting with the face he saw in the library table yesterday afternoon and ending with his horrifying encounter with the Woman. After Eddie finished his story, Harris slumped over onto the cafeteria table and threw his arms over his head.
“What’s wrong?” said Maggie.
“Don’t you get it?” said Harris, turning his head slightly to speak. “The legend of the woman in the woods? Like all the other monsters that have attacked us for whatever reason-touching the water at the lake, picking the flower, going into the woods at night-now she’s coming for Eddie. She followed him down from the statue in the Nameless Woods, and she’ll haunt him until he’s totally gone bonkers!”
“Stop scaring him.” Maggie slapped Harris’s shoulder and rolled her eyes before looking at Eddie. “You’re not going bonkers,” she said. “She came to you for a specific reason. She doesn’t want to drive you crazy. She wants you to leave her alone.” She paused, thinking. “Didn’t you say she told you to read something less frightening? Maybe she was trying to scare you so you’d stop reading The Enigmatic Manuscript.”
Eddie bit at his bottom lip. “Should we stop? I mean… now that we’ve read about what she can do to people in The Wish of the Woman in Black… it seems really stupid to keep going.”
Harris sat up. “We can’t just stop! Not now that we’re so close to finding out what happened to Nathaniel Olmstead. He obviously did something that made her mad. If he’s in trouble… maybe we can help him.”
“Why?” said Maggie.
The boys looked at her like she was crazy.
“He said it himself,” she continued. “The creatures came through the door-whatever door he’s talking about, I don’t know-but he said it’s his fault. Maybe he doesn’t deserve our help.”
As he sat at the lunch table, images of the Woman in Black flashed through Eddie’s memory and he shuddered. But maybe Maggie was right. He pulled his book bag onto his lap. “There’s so much more to the story now that you won’t understand until you actually read it for yourselves.” He took out the two photocopied packets he’d made for Harris and Maggie. “You’ll have to tell me what you think.” He handed one to each of them. “Try to read it all if you can,” he said. “We’ll meet at the end of the day and keep working.”
After school, they quietly walked to Harris’s house together. Both Harris and Maggie had managed to finish reading everything Eddie had written. Despite the Woman’s threat, they were intrigued and seemed excited to find the answers to Nathaniel Olmstead’s mystery. They all agreed: they might as well try to read a little bit more.
At the bookstore, they found Frances standing on the front porch, looking at the wooden deck beneath her feet.
“What’s the matter, Mom?” said Harris, stopping at the bottom of the steps.
When Frances turned around, Eddie could see that her cheeks were blotchy red. She’d been crying. Embarrassed, she quickly wiped her face. “Oh, Harris,” she said, “you brought friends.” She came to the top step, reached out, and held on to the balustrades on either side of the stairs. When Harris tried to peer around her, she moved, as if trying to block his view. “Wait,” she whispered.
“What the heck!” said Harris, rushing up the steps and pushing past her. She stepped aside. Eddie could see what she’d been trying to hide. Someone had spray-painted black graffiti on the floor of the porch.
The Woman Is Coming for You…
Frances covered the graffiti with an old rug. She told them she would be busy with several book orders upstairs, so they had the place to themselves. Since the bookstore was empty, they organized themselves at a quiet table in the back.
Eddie felt like the graffiti had been his fault. If he hadn’t picked the flower, the gremlin wouldn’t have attacked them. If the gremlin hadn’t attacked them, no one would have spread any rumors, and the vandals wouldn’t have targeted Harris’s store again.
Harris told him to forget about it. “It’s happened before,” he said. “It’ll happen again. Besides, it can be painted over.”
Looking at his friends, Eddie wondered if they weren’t all the class freaks now. At least they would be freaks together. The Exiled. In a twisted way, the three of them were like the Lilim now, weren’t they? Eddie kept the thought to himself.
They picked up their notebooks and pens. Eddie opened The Enigmatic Manuscript to the spot where he had been interrupted the night before. He laid The Wish of the Woman in Black open to its last page, where the code key was written. “We work together, like yesterday,” he said, more determined than ever.
After researching the legend of the key in Romania for nearly a month, Nathaniel finally returned to the United States. He felt ready to be home.
Once there, he started to dream about a small town nestled in a group of wooded hills. It was called Gatesweed. The image of the town was so beautiful, he felt compelled to look up the name, to see if, somehow, the place might truly exist. To his surprise, after searching an atlas in the local library, he located a town called Gatesweed that happened to be a two-hour drive southwest of Coven’s Corner. Having already traveled so far for inspiration’s sake, he thought that one more jaunt-for curiosity’s sake-couldn’t hurt.
When Nathaniel arrived in Gatesweed, he felt like he’d come home. The hills, the mills, the park, the shape of the town itself were all familiar. Something told him to stay. With a loan from his parents, Nathaniel bought a house in the hills outside the center of the town. The place had been abandoned for years and needed plenty of work, so the price was right.
As he worked on the house during the day, he was struck by the number of story ideas that began to come to him. With every board he tore up and every stone he replaced, another image seemed to pop into his brain. He wrote them down in his notebooks, trying to capture them before they got away.
In the midst of renovations, Nathaniel discovered a passageway in the fireplace that led to a series of catacombs under the house. He was frightened, yet intrigued, to explore the space. After several hours, he decided that it would be perfect for a private office. What better place to write creepy stories than in a secret room in the basement?
At night, Nathaniel continued to have strange dreams. Now, instead of dreaming about Gatesweed, he began to dream about the woods beyond the orchard. Just like his earlier compulsion to find Gatesweed, Nathaniel now felt the need to explore this new pastoral domain at the bottom of the hill behind his house.
The next day, I trudged over the small ridge and down into a wide, wooded flatland. I walked for almost ten minutes before coming upon a dirt clearing.
On the other side of the clearing, I could see a strange white figure staring at me-a statue of a pretty young girl. Her face was pure white, but it was her eyes that caught my attention. Something about her gave me the chills. She held a book out to me. On the spine was carved a peculiar symbol-like some sort of Hebrew letter. I was shocked. Was this the letter, Chet, I’d read about in Romania? Looking closer, I noticed images of strange creatures carved into the base on which she stood. My suspicions began to materialize, like ghosts all around me.
I thought I heard a faint voice speaking unintelligible words into my ear; I dismissed it as a figment of my imagination. But the longer I watched the statue, the more I understood. Strange knowledge washed across my brain. I was standing on the brink of something huge. The evidence was unmistakable. The statue, the book in her hands, the symbol carved onto its cover, the images of the creatures dancing on the half-buried pedestal under the child’s bare feet. The words “oracle, henge, and monolith” repeated through my mind. These places truly existed-just like I’d read in The Myth of the Stone Children. And yet, reason would not allow me to believe that I had found a piece of the Garden’s wall.
Certainly, this was a powerful place. Its energy was palpable. But there must be some sort of explanation, I thought. I was certain that if I stood there long enough, the answer would come to me.
I remembered the silver pendant the Romanian woman had given me. According to the texts I read, the archangel’s key had the ability to lead whoever possessed it to the places where Eden ’s wall fell. Was it possible that the same thing had happened to me? If so, then my friend at the university had been wrong-the relic was not a fake. The pendant I had brought home was no mere souvenir. Looking into the stone child’s eyes, I knew that the key, which had once unlocked the Garden of Eden’s gate, was buried at the bottom of my sock drawer! The girl seemed to speak to me without words. The longer I stared at the statue, the more I felt I knew what I needed to do.
I walked all the way home, went upstairs to my bedroom, and removed the silver necklace from the drawer. It seemed to pulse in my hand with a cold heat. I was instantly filled with a great purpose. I knew then that the moment I had found this object, my destiny had been to come to Gatesweed and discover the statue in the woods-but there was something else, one final action I felt compelled to take.
I turned to a blank page in a notebook on my desk. Instinctively, I pressed the tip of the pendant to my notebook’s paper. To my surprise, a black line appeared like a pen mark. Then, for a reason I could not name, I drew the symbol that was carved into the stone child’s book.
Looking back, I now realize that at that moment, I had begun to tear a dangerous hole in the delicate fabric that protects our world from the mysterious ones that border it. I’d do anything now to take it all back.
“This is crazy,” said Eddie.
“Do you think he’s telling the truth?” said Maggie. “What if this is all just fiction?”
“After everything we’ve seen recently?” said Harris. “I think we can assume that he’s telling the truth.”
It had finally gotten dark out. Maggie cleared her throat and started rubbing her eyes. On the other side of the park, a car honked its horn. It was the first time since they’d opened the book that afternoon that they heard proof of the world outside their own private circle.
“Do you want some water?” Harris asked Maggie, who had been reading the last section aloud.
“No. I’m fine,” she said. “I actually feel like I don’t even really need the piece of paper to translate anymore.”
“What do you think is going to happen to him?” Eddie asked.
Harris closed his eyes, as if shutting out the inevitable conclusion.
Maggie shook her head. “I have an idea,” she said, “but I don’t want to spoil it.” Then she began where she had left off.
Using the pendant like a pencil, Nathaniel continued to write down bits and pieces of images and ideas-dark basements, secret keys to hidden doors, statues, ghosts, and demon dogs. From these notes, a story began to materialize.
Nearly a month after finding the statue in the woods, he began writing what would become his first novel, The Rumor of the Haunted Nunnery. After he finished, Nathaniel typed it up to send to agents and publishers. To his surprise, one of them wanted it, and shortly thereafter, it was published. He was thrilled that people were finally reading something he’d written.
He wrote all of the books using the pendant. On the first page, he wrote the title and his name. Below these words, he drew the Hebrew symbol. On the next page, he began the tale. If someone were to ask why he wrote the books that way, he wouldn’t have been able to provide a logical answer. It was something he just had to do-as if the silver pendant, or the statue in the woods, or something was providing unconscious instruction. But the process worked. When he used the pendant to write, he became especially inspired. He felt that if he questioned why, it might all go away, so he stopped asking questions. For a while.
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.
“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.
There was silence.
Finally, Harris said, “But what did happen after that?” “Maybe there’s more,” said Eddie. “Maybe there’s another book.”
Harris flashed him a grimace. “There’s no other book, Eddie. This is it. The end. He wrote it right here.”
“But it’s not the end,” said Eddie. “We can’t give up now. The Woman in Black is still haunting Gatesweed, which means that Nathaniel didn’t succeed.”
“Does that mean we should try?” said Maggie.
“Of course we should try,” said Eddie.
“Hold on a second,” said Maggie. “According to this book, the Woman in Black really has no power to harm us or anyone in Gatesweed, right? Other than her being truly creepy, what’s the real danger of just leaving her alone?”
“The danger,” said Eddie, “is the possibility of danger. We’re talking about the end of the world! If we have the power to stop her, we should do it. She’s there, watching and waiting for someone just like Nathaniel to come along so she can use him to do what she wants. As long as she exists, she’s going to want someone to open the stone child’s gate.”
“But in order for that to happen,” said Maggie, “someone would need to have the pendant. The one he used to write all of his books. And it’s at the bottom of the lake, right?”
Harris and Eddie glanced at each other.
“What’s wrong?” said Maggie.
“I guess you should show her,” said Eddie.
Harris went over to his desk. He turned on his computer. After typing Nathaniel Olmstead’s name into the search engine, he said, “Here. Look.” On the screen was the article that Harris had showed Eddie at the beginning of the month. Harris read part of it aloud, “‘When the lake was dredged, police discovered a small metal box. The nature of its contents is being kept secret as the investigation is ongoing. However, an anonymous source has exclusively revealed that this secret evidence has itself mysteriously disappeared.’”
“Oh no,” said Maggie. “The book and the pendant were in the box.”
Harris nodded. “The police pulled the box out of the lake. If we have The Enigmatic Manuscript, that means it’s possible that someone else has the pendant.”
“Right,” said Eddie. “It’s only a matter of time before this all happens again to someone else. The Woman in Black is not going to stop until she gets what she wants.”
“Unless we stop her,” said Harris. “Like Nathaniel tried to do.”
“But how?” said Maggie.
They sat in silence for a few seconds.
“Maybe the answer is still in The Enigmatic Manuscript,” said Eddie. “Could we have missed something?”
Harris’s bedroom door swung open, and they all screamed.
Frances stood in the doorway, smiling. “Gosh, you are jumpy today! Sorry to interrupt,” she said, “but soup’s on.”
Harris groaned, “Mom! You have to stop scaring us like that.”
When they finished eating dinner, Eddie, Harris, and Maggie decided to spend the rest of the night thinking about what they’d read.
After everything that had happened, Eddie was frightened to ride home alone, but he knew he needed to be brave. He pedaled as fast as he could, and by the time he made it up the steep road, Eddie was out of breath. He parked his bike in the barn but paused at the walkway that led to the front door. He looked down at Gatesweed. The streetlamps glittered in their concentric circles at the bottom of the hill, like firelight reflecting off ripples in a dark pool of water.
Tonight, a shadow was descending, a gathering darkness, and it was not merely the fallen night. Something sinister is hiding in the corners of this town, and everybody senses it, Eddie thought. They’re too scared to acknowledge it. Even if people could comprehend what had happened to Nathaniel, Eddie had a feeling they still would keep it a secret.
Harris, Maggie, and Eddie were different. He now understood their responsibility.
Part of him wanted to beg his parents to take him away, yet something was telling him to stay. He had found his first true friends here. The secret of the stone child had bound them together. They couldn’t leave the mystery unsolved. A character in a Nathaniel Olmstead story would never allow that to happen.
The wind tickled his neck and mussed his hair with its cold fingers. Eddie shivered. It was time to go inside.