Dan Poblocki - The Stone Child

As Eddie listened, he realized that a shape had appeared in the library table’s wood grain. The swirling and swooping lines of intermittent blond and brown wood looked like a face staring up at him. Long dark hair seemed to stretch toward the edge of the table, framing an uneven, lighter patch of wood from which empty eye sockets glared, skull-like, above a thin, angry mouth. Eddie’s heart raced as he stopped hearing what Maggie was reading.

The face appeared to be moving. For a moment, it seemed to smile. Then it parted its lips as Eddie pushed himself quickly away from the table. He gasped and said, “Do you guys see-”

“Excuse me.” Mr. Lyons, the school librarian, emerged from behind a bookshelf. “Where are you kids supposed to be this period?” he said.

Eddie nearly screamed. When he glanced at the table again, the face had disappeared. Had it only been his imagination? He stared at the table in disbelief. It took him a few seconds to realize that they had been caught. Mr. Lyons stood in the nearby aisle with his hands shoved into his pockets. The three kids glanced at each other, as if trying to psychically communicate before returning to the librarian.

“Well?” said Mr. Lyons.

“We’re working on a project,” said Harris. “For… uh… extra credit.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Lyons. “The infamous extra-credit excuse…” He approached their table, planted his fists on the surface, and leaned over the notebook in which Harris had been scribbling. Eddie worried that Mr. Lyons would ask what they were doing and then confiscate all of their work, but he didn’t seem to notice the strange words on the pages of The Enigmatic Manuscript.

“Get back to class now, and I won’t report you,” said Mr. Lyons. “However, if you’re caught in the hallway without a pass, don’t come crying to me. I will deny this conversation ever happened.” He flashed them a peace symbol, turned around, and walked away.

The kids stared at each other, then burst into nervous laughter. Eddie quickly glanced at the table again, to see if the face in the wood grain had returned. If the face had been there at all, Mr. Lyons seemed to have frightened it away. Eddie covered his own face, hoping silently that he was not going nuts.

“What do we do now?” said Harris. “There’s so much left to translate.”

“I’m pretty sure Mr. Lyons won’t let us use the photocopier now, so we can’t split the code up like we did today. Only one of us can keep working on the book tonight,” Maggie answered, pushing her chair from the table and standing up. “Later we can meet up and read it all together. Maybe tomorrow?”

“Good idea,” said Eddie quietly. “But who should keep translating it?”

Harris and Maggie glanced at each other. “It’s your book, Eddie,” said Harris. “I think you should be the one who works on it tonight… if you want to, that is.”

Eddie nodded. “I’ll keep my eyes open for anything important,” he said. Distracted by the memory of the wood-grain face, he gathered The Enigmatic Manuscript , their translation, and the piece of paper on which Maggie had written the code key, and shoved everything in his book bag. Translating the book by himself was a daunting task, but he knew he could do it. He only needed to stay focused.

As they made their way to the front of the library, Eddie wondered if he should mention the face to Harris and Maggie. But before he had a chance, the bell rang, startling him. He jumped.

“Call me tonight if you figure anything out. Good luck!” said Harris, pushing open the library door and disappearing with Maggie.

When Eddie came home from school, his mother was sitting at the kitchen table, typing on her laptop computer. She was transcribing from a notebook, which was sitting on the table. She was so intent on the computer screen that she didn’t glance up at Eddie as he said hello. When he tapped her on the shoulder, she nearly fell out of her chair.

“Edgar!” she said, finally seeing him standing next to her. “You scared me!” She took a deep breath and flipped the notebook over. Then she closed the computer. “I’m sorry. I’m coming up to the scariest chapter of my story. I’ve been sitting here, frightening myself as I go along. Every little noise I hear makes me jump.”

“Sounds really scary,” said Eddie, wandering to the counter and grabbing an apple. “When can I see it?”

“I’ll be done within the next couple days, I think,” she said. She tapped her fingernails on the table. She seemed distracted. “I saw a sign for an open-mic night on Saturday, at the bookstore in town. The Enigmatic Manuscript, I think it’s called?”

“That’s Harris’s mother’s store,” said Eddie.

“I know. I’m considering reading a chapter or two. Will you come watch? I think you’ll like it.”

“Of course,” said Eddie, nodding as he took a bite of the apple. “I’m sure Harris will like it too.”

After a moment, she cleared her throat. “And on a more serious note, I received a phone call from school today.”

“Really?” said Eddie, forcing himself to smile blankly. “About what?”

“They said you cut your history and English classes. Is that true?”

Eddie steadied himself by leaning against the counter near the kitchen sink. He nodded.

“I thought you loved those subjects,” she said. “What’s going on?”

He didn’t know how to explain himself. Everything’s fine, Mom. Except that Nathaniel Olmstead believed that he’d done something to open some sort of gate, and now, for some reason, Gatesweed is filled with monsters.

“Edgar,” she said, “I’m very happy that you’ve been making friends here in Gatesweed, but if these kids are talking you into…” She paused, then shook her head. “Well, I hope you’ll use better judgment next time.”

“It won’t happen again,” he whispered.

“That’s for sure,” said Mom, opening her computer. “No television for the rest of the week.”

“Okay,” he said, trying to sound disappointed.

As soon as Eddie finished his snack, he brought his book bag upstairs and closed his bedroom door. He took out The Enigmatic Manuscript, The Wish of the Woman in Black, Maggie’s code key, and the notebook pages of their translations. He laid everything on his bed, turned on his lamp, and propped three pillows against his headboard. Leaning against them, he settled back and opened his own notebook. For a brief moment, the wood-grain face from the library table flashed before his eyes, but then he noticed Maggie’s handwriting meandering across the notebook page. He forced the strange image out of his head and began to read.

I took out my wallet, but she pushed my money away, shaking her head. She said something to me that I couldn’t understand, then turned around and walked through her darkened doorway, leaving me alone in the alley.

Chewing on the end of his pen, Eddie scanned the page several times before he finally opened The Enigmatic Manuscript to where they’d been when Mr. Lyons had appeared. What was going to happen? Would tonight be the night he finally learned Nathaniel Olmstead’s fate? Or would the story end as abruptly as the book about the Woman in Black?

Finally, Eddie started to translate. He worked through each paragraph, transcribing every letter, leaving behind big bunches of words, which he then went back and read every few pages. He found it easier to understand that way.

Nathaniel Olmstead showed the Romanian woman’s strange metal object to his friend, who was impressed. Being a student of antiquity, his friend assured him that the object was not Romanian and most definitely had nothing to do with vampires. He showed Nathaniel an article from a history textbook about the legend of an enigmatic “key,” which some people believed had once locked the gates of Eden.