Dan Poblocki - The Stone Child

“If he wrote these himself, they’re probably worth tons of money,” said Eddie.

Harris shook his head. “Yeah, but we’re not here for money.”

Eddie blushed. “I know that,” he said. He reached into his bag and pulled out The Enigmatic Manuscript. Opening the front cover, he compared the handwriting on the first page to one of the other handwritten books. “Look… Here, where it says Nathaniel Olmstead… you can see the writing is the same. The same person who wrote The Enigmatic Manuscript wrote these books.”

“So then it was Nathaniel who wrote them,” said Harris, glancing up from where he knelt on the stone floor.

“All clues point in that direction,” said Eddie. “This is his house, after all. But what does it mean? Why did he write all of his books by hand? And why did he keep them in this secret room?”

“Doesn’t look like this room was his only secret,” said Harris. “Look at this.” He ran his finger around the outer edge of the stone on which he was perched. “This one is different. There’s no mortar keeping it in place. Just like the one Gertie finds in The Witch’s Doom.” He blew at the crevice where the other stones met it. Dirt and dust flew from the crack. When Harris rapped his knuckles against it, the stone sounded hollow. “Help me out.” The two knelt down opposite each other, but after trying to lift the stone, they realized that it was stuck. Harris said, “Do you think there’s something down here we can use to pull it up?” He glanced around. “What about that hammer in your bag?”

Eddie laughed and unzipped his bag. He reached inside and handed the hammer to Harris. “Hammer one. Boomerang zero.”

“Very funny.” Harris jammed the claw side of the hammer into the space between the stones. He jimmied it back and forth. It wiggled a tiny bit, but it wouldn’t give. “Dammit,” he said.

Eddie stood up. “Didn’t Gertie use a crowbar in the book? Maybe that, along with the hammer, will do it?”

“If we can find one, sure,” said Harris.

They picked through a few boxes in each corner of the room. Eddie searched near the empty doorway and felt that the darkness seemed to stare at him. Icy air crawled across the floor toward him. Frustrated and scared, Eddie scrambled away from the doorway. “This place is giving me the creeps.”

“Really?” said Harris sarcastically, glancing up from another box. “Whatever for?” Then he let out a yelp, and Eddie nearly fell over. “I found it!” He knelt near one of the empty dark doorways on the other side of the room, holding a small crowbar over his head.

“You’re going to give me a heart attack screaming like that!” said Eddie.

Harris shrugged.

They raced back to the center of the room. Harris hammered the end of the crowbar into the crevice, then, using it as a lever, he was able to lift the stone. After a few seconds, he slid it the rest of the way out of its bed. From inside the hole came a soft wheezing sound-like something trying to catch its breath. Eddie backed away as Harris leaned forward. “Don’t tell me you’re going to stick your hand in there?” Eddie said.

Harris nodded. “I’ve got to. There might be an answer inside.”

“There also might be a monster inside,” said Eddie.

Harris rolled his eyes, and before Eddie could stop him, he thrust his arm into the hole up to his shoulder. He scrunched up his face and grunted a bit. “I can feel something… Eww!”

“Is it a monster?” asked Eddie, scrambling away from the hole.

“No. It’s not a monster, but, as a matter of fact, it is a little… moist.” He wrenched himself backward. In his hand, he clutched a small rectangular object. Using his coat sleeve, Harris brushed off the dust and dirt. “It looks like another notebook. Like the ones in the filing cabinet over there.”

There was something strange about the book in Harris’s hands. Its binding was damp, but somehow inside, the pages were dry. Harris’s flashlight gave the book a ghostly glow. He opened the cover.

As Eddie took a closer look, goose bumps rose all over his body. Inside the notebook was the familiar scratchy writing. And on the first page was the same symbol Nathaniel had drawn into the rest of the books.

“ The Wish of the Woman in Black,” Harris read. “I haven’t read this one before.”

“An unpublished Nathaniel Olmstead book,” said Eddie. “Is this one written in code too?”

Harris’s hand trembled as he turned the page. He shook his head no. He stammered slightly as he read the first sentence aloud.

“‘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.’”

He glanced up from the page and raised one eyebrow. “I wonder why he buried this one under a rock?”

The Wish of the Woman in Black? Why did that sound familiar? thought Eddie.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said. “We’ll finish reading it somewhere else.”

“I don’t want to have to come back later, in case there’s something else we need from down here.” Harris glanced at the book in his hands. “See how far we get?”

“Before what?” said Eddie. He shuddered, sighed, then settled into his place on the cold floor.

Harris read. “‘The ancient people who long ago lived in Coxglenn had built a wall made out of fallen trees, dead bushes, branches, vines, and mud to try and keep her out. It had not worked. Now what was left of the brush barrier was broken by the lane that led into town. Stretching into the woods, its many sharp pieces reached and scratched at nothing, like a blind monster searching for prey…’”

For the next hour, the boys sat in the basement and read the book by flashlight. Every twenty pages or so, whoever was reading handed the notebook off to the other. They both agreed that it was the scariest Nathaniel Olmstead book yet.

The characters in the book seemed to shriek across the blank movie screen in Eddie’s head, running in fear from the horrible Woman in Black, whose quiet rage made her arguably the most dangerous creature in the worlds of Nathaniel’s books. Whatever-or whoever-stood in her presence would rot slowly from the inside out.

Eddie thought the ending of the fifth chapter was especially scary. He didn’t want to stop reading, even though his legs were starting to go numb.

One night, when Dylan lay in bed staring at the ceiling, he heard a noise downstairs. It sounded like something scratching at the walls. He thought it might be a mouse or a squirrel that had accidentally found its way inside. He threw the covers off his bed, put on his bathrobe and slippers, and made his way down the stairs. When he flicked the light switch in the living room, nothing happened. The moon was new, so the room was pitch-black. The scratching continued from the other side of the room.

“ Mom?” Dylan called up the stairs. “Dad?” He hoped they would come down, but they did not answer.

A horrible odor filled the darkness. Seconds later, Dylan heard low, inhuman laughter. Something stood in the living room with him, and Dylan could hear its quick, shallow breath. The scratching grew louder and started to inch closer.

He froze. Thinking it was a dream, he pinched himself, but he was horrified to realize that he was already awake.

“Eddie,” Harris whispered. “Did you hear that?”

Eddie looked up from the page. He’d become so enthralled with the story, he’d begun to forget where he was. “Hear what?”

“It sounded like…” Harris stared off into the shadows through one of the stone archways in the nearby wall. Then he shook his head. “Forget it. Just keep reading.”