Dan Poblocki - The Stone Child

As he was about to shut the curtain, Eddie noticed something strange happening in the center of town. It started with the park lights in the town green suddenly, collectively hushing out. Eddie watched as the streetlights on Center Street blinked out too. With each passing second, another circle of streetlights turned off. Then the buildings in between each concentric street seemed to lose power as well. Eddie had never seen anything like this before-during a normal power outage, all the electricity went out at once. But the darkness at the bottom of the hill seemed to be creeping toward him, like a disease.

The light on his bedside table dimmed even further, and Eddie groaned.

Unable to control himself, he leapt into the middle of his bedroom floor, clearing at least an arm’s length between where he landed and the dark space under his bed. Then he raced toward his bedroom door and yanked it open. The pitch-dark upstairs hallway stretched before him. Eddie paused and turned around. The thing with claws he imagined waiting for him underneath his mattress might still be there, but Eddie did not yet run. The darkness in the hallway seemed just as threatening.

As he stood in his doorway contemplating whether or not to peer under his bed, the light on his nightstand simply sputtered out. Darkness weighed upon the house like a musty quilt. Eddie’s throat felt like it was closing up, but he managed to call down the hallway for his parents. Again, they seemed not to hear him; he didn’t receive an answer. Eddie wondered if they were even in the house at all. Where else would they be at such a late hour?

Eddie began to feel claustrophobic. He could barely see-the hallway was more like a vague impression than the real thing. He stepped farther into the hallway, clutched at the cold glass doorknob, and swung the door shut.

Searching for the nearest light switch, he swiped at the wall. He found it, but when he flicked the switch, nothing happened. Eddie exhaled slowly, trying to compose himself. Next, he took a purposeful step toward his parents’ bedroom. Keeping his eyes straight forward, Eddie managed to make his way there. While terrified by the silence filling the house, he was also thankful that nothing was growling, whispering, or scratching from inside the walls-as so often happened in Nathaniel Olmstead’s books during moments like this.

He knocked at his parents’ bedroom door but didn’t wait for a response before turning the knob and swinging the door open. “Hello?” he said, stepping forward into the room. He heard the sheets rustling. Thank goodness, Eddie thought, scrambling quickly across the floor to his mother’s side of the bed. “It must be later than I thought,” he said quietly.

He reached out to touch her. He knew she wouldn’t mind him waking her-he’d done it before when he’d had a nightmare. He could feel her shoulder underneath the down comforter, but she didn’t respond, not even when he shook her slightly. “Mom!” he whispered.

Finally, she groaned in her sleep, then mumbled something. It sounded like, “What’s the matter?”

Eddie thought about how to respond without sounding paranoid. Any rational person could explain away his fears within seconds. The power’s gone out. Go back to bed . But Eddie didn’t want to go back to bed by himself-not after everything he’d learned from reading The Enigmatic Manuscript.

There was nearly a half-foot of space at the edge of the bed, so Eddie lay there, on top of the blanket. I’ll just stay until the power comes back on, he thought.

He smelled his mother’s fruity shampoo, but quickly the scent changed. It was no longer sweet, like his mother, but it was horrible-vaguely familiar, like something he’d experienced in a nightmare. He remembered the odor from Nathaniel Olmstead’s basement, when he and Harris had been reading The Wish of the Woman in Black . Where was it coming from? Eddie sat up, holding his nose. He listened to his parents’ breathing beside him. Sleeping soundly, they seemed not to notice the stench.

Eddie couldn’t stomach it; the smell was making him sick.

Reaching out toward his mother, he touched what he thought was her hair sprawled across the pillow. But the feel of it was unlike his mother’s long curls. His fingers clutched at what felt like cobwebs-thin, sticky strands that clung to his hand as he pulled away in horror. “Mom!” Eddie screamed. But instead of sitting up suddenly, his parents continued to lie in bed. His father even started to snore. “Wake up!” he said. He drew his hand away, as what he thought had been his mother finally turned over to look at him.

It was a shape blacker than the shadows that rose from the bed and towered over Eddie, who continued to lie on the mattress frozen in terror.

He knew who she was. Impossible as it seemed, he’d seen her staring at him from the wood grains in the library table that afternoon. Eddie thought he might puke.

Her weathered face, so white it was almost green, hovered near the ceiling and glimmered in the darkness like an alien moon. Her skin was chapped, transparent, like wet paper. Her tattered, malignant hair hung from her head like rotting seaweed-long, ragged, and blacker than the deepest part of the ocean. Her eyes were dark empty holes, and her lipless mouth gaped like a fish. Heavy black robes stretched away from her body like shadows being pulled away from the walls. As she moved forward, she clenched her hands in front of herself. Her face tightened as she seemed to squint at him.

Eddie wiped a tickle at the back of his collar. Sweat.

Wake up, she said in a mimicking, high-pitched voice. Wake up , she repeated. Wake up. Then she started to laugh-a dark din totally unlike the voice she’d just used to taunt him. The sound hurt his ears. Her robes lifted and swirled around her as she reached toward him. The woman’s hair whipped at her face. Her black eyes expanded until they were all he knew.

He was falling into them. He couldn’t stop. There was nothing to hold on to. Nothing but darkness and the sound of laughter and the rush of-

Thump!

Eddie fell off the bed and hit the ground. He scrambled backward and toppled his mother’s bedside table. Her lamp turned over and crashed to the floor. Eddie leapt to his feet, suddenly furious. “What did you do with my parents?” he shouted at the woman, remembering the book in which Dylan finds two soggy piles of pajamas on the living room floor. If he stuck around for much longer, he knew he’d end up just like that. She reached toward him, but Eddie ducked. He managed to run to the end of the bed and around the corner of the bedpost, where he had a straight shot for the door. But halfway across the room, he slipped on the rug. As he struggled to stand, he felt a chill run up his spine. The Woman stood inches behind him, her face nearly a foot over his own. Before he had a chance to scream, she seemed to smile. A horrible, humorless, manipulative smile, but a smile nonetheless.

Eddie…, her voice purred-deeply, vibrantly. It reminded him of the soft string-quartet music his parents sometimes played on the stereo during dinner. Why do you want to hurt me?

“I… I don’t want to hurt you,” he heard himself say. He looked at his hands; for some reason, he wasn’t melting.

Good boy…, she continued. Stay away from things which do not concern you… Put that book back on the shelf… Her hair reminded him of plant tendrils floating in underwater currents. Read something else instead , she continued. Something… happier. Prettier. Less… frightening.

Eddie didn’t know what to say. “I… I…,” was all that came out of his mouth when he tried to speak.

Unless you like being frightened…, she whispered. Do you? Her eye sockets widened. She waited for his answer, as if she were truly curious, or almost amused. Do you like being scared, Eddie? Because scary is something I am quite good at… I have had many years of experience…