Dan Poblocki - The Stone Child

Maggie bumped into Eddie’s back as she came up the stairs, pushing him forward into the kitchen. Eddie caught a glimpse out the window. The town green was lit up as usual, as were all the buildings on Center Street.

The Woman in Black was gone. It was as if she had never even been here.

“Honey, what’s the matter?” said Frances, pushing Harris away so she could see his face. “This is not the Spanish Inquisition. I only asked if you were hungry.”

Harris turned away, wiping at his eyes, embarrassed. “Are we hungry, you guys?” he said. Eddie and Maggie nodded slowly. Turning back toward his mother, Harris said, “Can they stay for dinner? We’re working on a project tonight.” He choked back a sob, finally composing himself. “Hopefully, we’ll be done soon.”

“Of course,” said Frances, looking concerned. She went to the sink and turned on the faucet. Filling a saucepan with water, she glanced over her shoulder. “For goodness’ sake, Harris, I had no idea you took your homework so seriously.”

In Harris’s bedroom, they placed The Enigmatic Manuscript and their translations in the middle of the floor and sat in a triangle around them. They stared at the book in silence for a whole minute before Maggie said, “Whose turn is it?”

“If we keep reading, is she going to come after us again?” said Harris, still shaken. “Is she going to come after my mom again?”

Maggie picked at her fingernail. “She might want us to think she will. But I have a feeling that we should keep reading anyway.”

“Even if she tries to…,” Eddie started. But he couldn’t think of how to end the sentence. “Tries to…”

“Tries to scare us?” Maggie finished. “That’s all she’s been doing so far.”

Eddie flinched. “Wait a second,” he said. “You’re right. All she has been doing is scaring us. Like her bark is worse than her bite?”

“But barking is not all she can do,” said Harris. “You read The Wish of the Woman in Black yourself. She’s evil.”

“No. She’s angry,” said Maggie. “But if she’s so powerful, why hasn’t she turned us into little black piles of goo, like she’s so good at?”

“Maggie!” Eddie said, leaning forward and clutching her arm. “She might be listening.”

“So what?” said Maggie, yanking herself away. “I think if she really could stop us from reading this book, she’d have done it already, instead of performing these little parlor tricks. Flickering lights? I mean… are we really that scared of the dark?”

“Yes!” said Eddie and Harris at the same time.

“This is why I don’t read these kinds of books!” said Maggie. “Being scared makes you act like an idiot.”

“Hey,” said Eddie, “you weren’t the one she spoke to. Maybe if you’d been there last night, you’d understand…”

“I’m here now,” Maggie answered quietly, “and we need to finish reading the book.” She picked it up and handed it to Eddie. She smiled and said, “We can do it. I know we can.”

… that was before the nightmares began.

I would tumble from my bed, screaming into the night. The darkness coaxed me back to bed, but as soon as I placed my head on the pillow, the awful visions returned-children with no faces, cities full of gravestones, hands clawing at me from behind my wallpaper, shadows that tied me to the floor-and all the while, the sound of the Woman’s laughter taunted me.

Finally, I stopped sleeping at all. During the day, I was a zombie. Since putting away the pendant, writing was impossible, so sometimes, I pulled it from the desk drawer in the basement, wondering if I should simply write the Woman’s story. But I had promised myself I wouldn’t. At that point, the thought of another missing child on my conscience was enough to deter me from using the pendant to write.

But I was certainly tempted. If I gave the Woman what she wanted, she might leave me alone. After that, I could throw the pendant away, bury it somewhere, hide it. Deep down, I knew it was not so simple.

The longer I waited, the worse the dreams became. Soon, whenever I closed my eyes, for even a few seconds, the most horrible, violent, and disgusting images flashed across the backs of my eyelids, like monster movies in a run-down movie theater. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take. I had become short-tempered and irritable. I began to suspect that I was losing my mind. If I didn’t do something soon, not only would my few friends in town stop wanting to be near me anymore, but I wouldn’t be able to function in public at all. Everywhere I looked I imagined some new horror. What I could see most clearly was my future-locked in a padded cell.

Eddie stopped reading. In the ceiling, the light had started to flicker.

Maggie shook her head. “Keep reading, Eddie. She only wants us to stop.” She looked toward the ceiling, as if the Woman was watching them from up there. “But we’re not going to!” she shouted.

Shaken, Eddie slowly turned away from the overhead light and looked at the page. He steadied his hand and continued to read.

On June first, I stood on the hill next to my house and called out over the orchard, “I will write you into a story! But you must promise to leave me alone. And you cannot hurt anyone!” From the woods came my reply-a flurry of black-winged birds rose into the blue sky like ink bleeding onto blank paper. Their cawing sounded triumphant, like a jeering crowd at a baseball game. I nodded and went inside. At my desk, I opened a new notebook. Using the key, which had supposedly once held shut the gates of Eden, I wrote the first paragraph of what would become The Wish of the Woman in Black.

“ 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.“

I wrote for a week straight. The horrible visions finally went away. I woke early in the morning and worked, only breaking for lunch and coffee, until at night, I fell into bed, exhausted. After several chapters, I realized the situation was more complicated than I’d originally imagined. The story was the most terrifying yet-the Woman the most dangerous of all my creatures. Her anger was unrelenting and uncontrollable. I could clearly see where her story was heading. In my mind, I could see the book’s last page. The town of Coxglenn and everyone in it would be reduced to a lake of quivering sludge. In her story, goodness would not prevail. She would not allow it. Not only would her book be terrible, but if I allowed her to come through the stone child’s gate, she would be unstoppable. I knew she would destroy whatever she touched, and she would not stop until Gatesweed, and the world beyond the town’s borders, lay in ruins.

Out of the corner of his eye, Eddie saw a shadow moving near the closet door, but when he looked, there was nothing there.

“Eddie!” said Harris. “Don’t stop reading!”

“Sorry. I thought I saw…,” Eddie started to say. But then he looked down at The Enigmatic Manuscript . If he concentrated hard enough, the rest of the room went away. Only the story remained. “Never mind,” he said. “Where was I?”

“ Ruins,” Maggie whispered.

I knew I could not finish writing her story. If I did, I wouldn’t be able to face the consequences. Instead, I would have to face her consequences. Unless I could somehow stop her. But how?

Then I thought-if the manuscript allows these creatures to come into our world, I must destroy the manuscript.

I tried erasing it. I tried burning it. I tried soaking it in water, in alcohol, in gasoline. I tried cutting it to pieces. I even tried to scribble over the words using the tip of the pendant itself. But nothing worked-somehow, the magic of the archangel’s key had made the pages indestructible, everlasting. I tested my theory with the other manuscripts in my basement, but they were all the same. Permanently marked. Like a stain I could not wash away.