Dan Poblocki - The Stone Child

He imagined the books sitting in the middle of Nathaniel Olmstead’s driveway-a place he had hoped to avoid for quite some time.

“Uh…,” he struggled to say. His face began to sting. He emptied the bag, but the only thing remaining was the big hammer at the bottom, which he quietly shoved in the back of his desk drawer.

“Eddie? Are you there?”

“Yeah,” Eddie whispered. “I’m here… but the books are gone.”

Every time someone slammed a locker door the next day at school, Eddie felt like jumping out of his skin. His heart raced when Ms. Phelps asked him a question about ratios. Out of the corner of his eye, Eddie thought he saw someone watching him in the mirror while he washed his hands in the boys’ bathroom, but when he turned to look, no one was there. The past couple days had taken a toll on his nerves.

Part of him was relieved that he had lost the books the night before. If it weren’t for Harris, Eddie thought he might want to take a big break from anything having to do with Nathaniel Olmstead. But the other part of him felt terrible that all the work they had done so far was gone. Now, even if they were actually smart enough to figure out what the code meant, they couldn’t!

They met after third period outside the gym. When Eddie saw Harris, he gasped. Harris looked terrible. His hair was greasy, his eyes were glazed, and he looked like he’d just crawled out of bed.

“What’s wrong?” Eddie asked.

“I couldn’t sleep,” said Harris. “I kept wondering where we might have lost the books. I know last night you said you didn’t want to, but the only thing I can think to do is go back to the house and look for them.”

They heard a sneaker squeak on the linoleum behind them. When they turned, Maggie smiled. For the first time since he’d met her, Eddie thought she looked happy to see him. She brushed her dark hair out of her face and hiked her bag up on her shoulder. “Can I come?”

Eddie and Harris were speechless.

“Look,” said Maggie, “that was some crazy stuff up there in the woods last night. I can’t stop thinking about it.” When the boys didn’t answer her, she said in a playful tone, “Then I guess it’s not really worth showing you what I found.”

Harris rolled his eyes. “What did you find?”

“You’re not interested. Forget it.”

“Maggie…,” said Eddie, sounding more pathetic than he wanted to.

“This whole boys-only thing is so fifth grade,” she said. She smiled again. “Promise you’ll let me come, and I’ll tell you.”

Eddie turned to Harris. Somehow, he was certain what she had to offer would be worth it. They both nodded. “You can come,” they said at the same time.

“Great.” Maggie slapped their shoulders. They both winced.

“So tell us. What did you find?” Harris said.

Maggie slipped her bag off her shoulder, reached inside, and dug around. “In the house last night, I overheard everything you said.” Harris started to protest, but Maggie interrupted. “Get over it.” Harris folded his arms but listened. “After you read that story about that creepy old woman, Eddie, you mentioned something about a code that matched up a couple of books you guys had.” She pulled two books out of her bag. “These books, right?”

“Oh, geez,” said Harris, turning pale, throwing his hands to the ceiling. “Thank goodness.”

“Whoa,” said Eddie, relieved.

“Guess we don’t really need to head back up to the woods, after all,” she said, smiling, and handed the books to Eddie. “You left them in my dad’s pickup,” she said. “He found them this morning. We were all pretty out of it last night when he gave you a ride home, so I guess you didn’t notice that they’d fallen on the floor. Still, if they’re so important, you might want to keep closer watch on them.”

“We’ll try,” said Harris, slamming his locker.

The second bell rang. They were all officially late.

“I’ve got to go,” Eddie said, inching down the hall.

“But I solved your code,” said Maggie smugly.

Eddie wasn’t sure if he heard her correctly, but when he saw Harris’s mouth drop open, he figured that he had. The hallways were slowly starting to empty, and Eddie’s heart started to race as he realized that the hall monitors would soon be at their stations.

Maggie shoved another loose piece of hair behind one ear and said, “How do you guys feel about cutting class?”

Inside the school library, they found a quiet table in the reference section-an isolated spot toward the back of the room, hidden behind several large shelves near the windows.

Maggie took a piece of paper out of her book bag and placed it on the table, facedown, next to The Enigmatic Manuscript and The Wish of the Woman in Black. She zipped up her black hooded sweatshirt, then pushed her dark, messy hair behind her ears. On her wrist, she loosely wore several black rubber bands, which she adjusted before resting her skinny hands on the table in a businesslike manner.

Eddie remembered that she’d told him about liking science and math. Funny, he thought as he stared at her, in her Goth costume she looked more like she’d be into magic and mystery stories. Maybe she was, but she just didn’t know it yet.

“I don’t mean to sound like a total jerk,” Maggie began, “but before I tell you anything, I want to know what’s going on here.”

“Lots of stuff is going on here,” said Harris. He picked up The Enigmatic Manuscript and tapped its spine on the table. “What do you want to know?”

Maggie thought, took a deep breath, and then said, “Well… everything.”

Before the next bell rang, Eddie managed to tell Maggie most of what had happened to him since coming to Gatesweed. She spent several seconds silently contemplating his story. Then she turned to Harris and said, “You seem to be a Nathaniel Olmstead expert, so what do you think is going on here, Harris?”

Harris smiled and leaned forward to answer. “After everything that’s happened to Eddie and me, I’m beginning to think Nathaniel Olmstead’s monsters chased him out of Gatesweed.” Then his smiled dropped, as he seemed to recall the previous night’s events. “Chased him out… or something worse.”

Maggie and Eddie glanced at each other. “That would mean the monsters in Nathaniel Olmstead’s books are real,” she said.

“When the Watchers chased us through the woods last night, they certainly looked real, didn’t they?” said Harris. “You’ve heard of the curse. And you saw what happened in the library.”

“Yeah, but…” After a moment, she closed her eyes and shook her head. “There’s got to be a rational explanation for all of this.”

“Every single thing that’s happened to us so far seems to be connected to Nathaniel Olmstead’s stories,” said Eddie. He opened The Enigmatic Manuscript to the front page. “We were hoping this book might give us a clue why.” He looked into Maggie’s eyes. “You said you solved the code. Please. Will you tell us how?”

Maggie sighed and hugged her rib cage. “Last night, I flipped through the two books,” she said. “I remembered what you’d said in Nathaniel Olmstead’s basement, Eddie. About the code appearing in both books. You need a code key in order to read it, right? After I stared at it for a while, I had an idea. Since there were only two lines written at the end of the Woman in Black book, I counted the letters. There are twenty-six of them. No more. No less. And they’re all different. See? Only one of each.” Maggie opened to the last page of The Wish of the Woman in Black . Eddie looked at the letters Nathaniel Olmstead had scrawled there.