Dan Poblocki - The Stone Child

“It was fine. I got Dunkleman this time.” Harris spun away from the sink and wiped his hands on his jeans, leaving wide wet marks over his pockets. “Come on, Eddie. Let’s go play video games. You can call your mom from my room.”

“You finished your homework already?” said Frances.

“First day of school. I only have a little bit tonight,” said Harris, disappearing around the corner into the hallway. “I’ll do it before bed, okay?”

Eddie looked at Frances, who just smiled and waved, shooing him off to follow her son. “Boys,” she said with fake exasperation. “Go. Play. It’s nice to meet you, Eddie.”

“You too,” said Eddie, following Harris around the corner.

A few minutes later, Eddie was sitting on Harris’s bed, as Harris leaned over his computer’s keyboard. “Here,” said Harris, typing Nathaniel Olmstead’s name into a search engine Web site. Several items related to the author appeared in the search window. Buy Nathaniel Olmstead books… 50% off! Are you an Olmsteady…? Click here! Harris clicked on the last link, which appeared to be a listing from the archives of the Gatesweed Gazette. “Check this out.”

On the screen an article appeared, dating from the time of the author’s disappearance. Eddie read the first part of it carefully. The article described how the town-wide search party had discovered the statue in the woods.

“After I started getting into Nathaniel Olmstead’s books, I came across this article,” said Harris, scrolling the cursor to the bottom of the screen. A small box appeared where the article ended, showing a crudely drawn map of the Nameless Woods. The clearing, the statue, and the lake were specifically marked. “I used this map to find my way. I wanted to see if I could discover anything the search party might have missed.”

“What’s that there?” said Eddie, leaning forward and pointing at an X that had been marked in the middle of the lake, in the same spot where the water had turned black.

“That’s where the police found evidence.”

“What sort of evidence?” said Eddie.

Harris scrolled the cursor and read from the screen. “‘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.’”

“That is weird!” said Eddie. “What do you think was in the box?”

Harris shook his head. “Listen to this,” he said as he continued to read. “‘The disappearance of the evidence was understandable to one eyewitness, who wished to remain unidentified. According to the witness, as the lake was being dredged, a pack of vicious dogs chased the search party from the area. “In all the confusion,” said the witness, “anything we found might have been lost. We barely escaped with the seats of our pants intact. It was like something from one of poor Nathaniel’s books.”’” Harris stopped reading and turned to look at Eddie.

At the same time, both boys opened their mouths and said, “ The Rumor of the Haunted Nunnery!”

“I was thinking the same thing when we were up in the woods,” Eddie added.

Harris leapt from his chair and ran to the bookcase next to his bed. Eddie could see Harris’s alphabetized collection of Nathaniel Olmstead books filling the top row. Harris pulled out a book and flipped through it until he found what he was looking for. Eddie couldn’t see the book’s cover, but he knew exactly what Harris had found.

“‘Reflected in the water, some of the stars had already changed color, from white to red,’” Harris read aloud. “‘As he watched, they all turned, then began to move. In an instant, they divided into hundreds of pairs of red eyes that watched him from under the lake’s surface.’” When he finished, he looked up at Eddie. “The monster lake-dogs.”

“Do you actually think that’s what we saw?”

“It sure looked like it.”

“In the book, the dogs came out of the lake and chased Ronald after he accidentally touched the water,” said Eddie.

Harris was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “The water turned black after you threw the pebble at it. Remember? Then we saw those stars. They turned red. Then that thing started to come up onshore… just like in Nathaniel Olmstead’s book…”

“Right,” Eddie whispered.

“The group of people from this article touched the water, too, when they were searching the bottom of the lake,” said Harris, closing the book and putting it back on the shelf. “Maybe that’s why the dogs chased after them?”

“Maybe,” said Eddie. “But I have a different question.”

“What do you mean?”

“How does a pack of dogs live underneath a lake?” he said, swiveling toward Harris. “Unless the Olmstead Curse is real?”

Harris blinked at him.

“There has to be some connection between what happened to us in the woods and everything else you told me today,” Eddie continued. “The symbol carved into the statue is the same as on the front page of the book my parents found at the antiques fair. The dogs appeared in the lake, just the way Nathaniel Olmstead wrote about them in The Rumor of the Haunted Nunnery. And what about the legend of the ghost in the woods-the Woman from the graffiti? Maybe she’s…”

“What? She’s real too?” Harris said into his hands.

Despite what he’d seen in the woods, Eddie felt foolish for thinking something so crazy. He bit at the inside of his mouth and tried not to blush. “It’s just a thought.”

“If we could read the stupid code, we could sort out what the connection might actually be,” said Harris, lifting his face from his hands.

“Totally,” said Eddie. “We’re on the verge of something really big. But there is something else…”

“What’s that?”

“The curse… Remember how you said some people in Gatesweed think that the monsters in Nathaniel Olmstead’s books are real?”

Harris nodded skeptically.

“Those people don’t seem so crazy anymore, do they?” Eddie continued. He thought about the scaredy cop and the tow truck driver, Sam. And Mrs. Singh, the librarian. “Maybe they know something we don’t.”

Before Harris could answer, there was a knock at the door. The boys jumped as Frances opened the door a crack.

“Dinner’s ready,” she said. “Hope you’re hungry.”

Before Eddie got on his bike to ride home, Harris asked him to see The Enigmatic Manuscript one more time. Eddie hesitated for only a second before pulling the book out of his bag. After everything they’d gone through today, he felt it belonged to Harris as much as it belonged to him now. He watched as Harris flipped through it, scanning the strange writing.

“What is it?” asked Eddie. “Do you see something?”

“I’m not sure,” said Harris, looking up. “Do you mind if I keep this tonight?”

Eddie looked into Harris’s eyes, and what he saw there, he knew he could trust. This is what came with friendship. “Okay,” Eddie said. “That’s cool.”

“I’ll give it back to you tomorrow,” said Harris. “I promise.”

Eddie refrained from telling Harris to be careful with it, as he got on his bike and waved goodbye.

Harris returned the book to Eddie during lunch the next day, just like he said he would.

The day after that, Eddie brought the code-breaker book to school. One small section had caught his eye. It mentioned the history of secret decoder rings-a toy popularized in the 1930s that allowed kids to send encrypted messages to each other. The ring consisted of two alphabets lined up next to each other on two attached discs. To create the secret code, you simply rotated the discs, offsetting the two alphabets, so that the letters no longer matched up. The letter A offset by three would become the letter C . To solve the message, you simply had to know the offset number.