Dan Poblocki - The Stone Child

“Oh no,” said Maggie. “The book and the pendant were in the box.”

Harris nodded. “The police pulled the box out of the lake. If we have The Enigmatic Manuscript , that means it’s possible that someone else has the pendant.”

“Right,” said Eddie. “It’s only a matter of time before this all happens again to someone else. The Woman in Black is not going to stop until she gets what she wants.”

“Unless we stop her,” said Harris. “Like Nathaniel tried to do.”

“But how?” said Maggie.

They sat in silence for a few seconds.

“Maybe the answer is still in The Enigmatic Manuscript,” said Eddie. “Could we have missed something?”

Harris’s bedroom door swung open, and they all screamed.

Frances stood in the doorway, smiling. “Gosh, you are jumpy today! Sorry to interrupt,” she said, “but soup’s on.”

Harris groaned, “Mom! You have to stop scaring us like that.”

When they finished eating dinner, Eddie, Harris, and Maggie decided to spend the rest of the night thinking about what they’d read.

After everything that had happened, Eddie was frightened to ride home alone, but he knew he needed to be brave. He pedaled as fast as he could, and by the time he made it up the steep road, Eddie was out of breath. He parked his bike in the barn but paused at the walkway that led to the front door. He looked down at Gatesweed. The streetlamps glittered in their concentric circles at the bottom of the hill, like firelight reflecting off ripples in a dark pool of water.

Tonight, a shadow was descending, a gathering darkness, and it was not merely the fallen night. Something sinister is hiding in the corners of this town, and everybody senses it, Eddie thought. They’re too scared to acknowledge it. Even if people could comprehend what had happened to Nathaniel, Eddie had a feeling they still would keep it a secret.

Harris, Maggie, and Eddie were different. He now understood their responsibility.

Part of him wanted to beg his parents to take him away, yet something was telling him to stay. He had found his first true friends here. The secret of the stone child had bound them together. They couldn’t leave the mystery unsolved. A character in a Nathaniel Olmstead story would never allow that to happen.

The wind tickled his neck and mussed his hair with its cold fingers. Eddie shivered. It was time to go inside.

When the phone rang on Saturday morning, Eddie was still in bed. Moments later, his mother knocked on his door.

“It’s for you,” she said, and handed him the phone.

Eddie sat up and said, “Hello?” Harris was on the other end of the line. He asked Eddie to come apple picking with him and Frances. Eddie had never done anything like that before, but it sounded fun. It would be a pleasant distraction from everything else.

“I thought your mother’s store was open today,” Eddie said.

“It is,” said Harris, “but since we’re open later for the reading tonight, my mom thought she’d take the morning off. I heard your mother’s gonna read something she wrote. That’s so cool!”

“Yeah,” said Eddie. “I know.”

Around noon, Frances and Harris picked him up, and they drove west along Black Ribbon Road. To Eddie’s surprise, she turned left into Maggie’s driveway. Maggie was waiting for them outside the small house. She wore a long black coat and a red scarf. She ran to the car and got into the backseat, next to Eddie. “Hi, Ms. May. Hi, Eddie,” she said. Then she quietly added, “Thanks for inviting me, Harris.”

Harris mumbled something that sounded like “You’re welcome.” As Frances looked over her shoulder and backed out of the driveway, Eddie noticed that she wore a tiny smile.

The apple orchard a few miles north of Gatesweed was much larger than the overgrown one behind Nathaniel Olmstead’s house. Together, they picked four big bags of apples, tasting them as they went along. McIntosh were the sweetest-Eddie’s favorite. After that, they each chose a pumpkin from the farm stand.

When Frances wandered away to look for mums for the front porch, Eddie, Harris, and Maggie huddled together and sipped on cider.

“Do you think the Woman in Black will go away now that we finished reading The Enigmatic Manuscript?” said Maggie.

“Maybe,” said Harris. “Unless we figure out what she didn’t want us to know.”

Before they could continue, Frances waved to them from the counter near the cash register. She needed help carrying the flowers back to her car. Eddie lifted two small plastic buckets filled with burgundy blossoms off the ground and hugged them to his chest. As he carried them to Frances ’s car, their pungent scent tickled his nose. Harris and Maggie helped him place them into the trunk of the car, unable now to discuss what they were all secretly thinking about.

Back in Gatesweed, they spent the afternoon helping Frances organize the store for the reading. Eddie set up several rows of folding chairs. Upstairs in the kitchen, Maggie helped Frances put together a couple plates filled with cheese and crackers. Harris went through the store with a feather duster, cleaning places that hadn’t been touched in weeks.

As they worked into dusk, Eddie half expected the Woman in Black to appear again. Something told him she wasn’t through with them yet.

Eventually, a few people showed up for the reading. Eddie thought it was nice that Frances had some town support. It was not a large audience, but there were enough people to create a small din. When Eddie saw his own mother and father, he gave them both a big hug. His father wore a tweed jacket and a navy blue tie. His mother wore a simple charcoal-colored dress with a fuzzy red shawl draped across her shoulders.

“Mom, you look pretty,” Eddie said as he took a seat next to her. He saved two chairs on the other side for Maggie and Harris.

“Thanks, honey,” she said. She tapped her foot on the chair in front of her.

“Are you nervous?”

“A little bit. It’s silly, I know-this is a small bookstore in the middle of nowhere,” said Mom.

“It’s not silly,” said Eddie. “I can’t wait to hear your story.”

“Well, the story isn’t quite finished.”

“But you’re not reading the whole thing, right?” said Eddie.

“No, only the very first part. I’ll feel better once I finish. I think I only have a couple pages left. I’d like to be done by tomorrow.”

“Wow,” said Eddie. “It only took you a month to write a whole book?”

Mom smiled. “What can I say? Since we moved here, I’ve been feeling inspired!”

A couple minutes later, Frances stood before the audience and thanked everyone for coming. Harris and Maggie sat down next to Eddie. Frances introduced the first reader, who happened to be a substitute teacher at Eddie’s school. She read a short poem about her cat. Next came one of the high school students, who read an essay he’d written for his English class. That was followed by an elderly woman who read a picture book about tadpoles that her daughter had written. Eddie didn’t listen to a single word. In his head, Nathaniel Olmstead’s story churned around and around, like storm clouds gathering and growing.

Finally, Frances stood up and introduced Eddie’s mom. She clenched her husband’s hand, then leaned toward Eddie and whispered in his ear, “Wish me luck!” She squeezed past him and made her way up the aisle to the front of the audience.

“Good luck,” he whispered back.

She stood beside the table Frances had set up as a podium. In her hands, she held a small notebook. Eddie closed his eyes and leaned forward to pay close attention to his mother’s story. Eddie’s mother lifted the cover of her notebook and took a deep breath. “The piece I’ll be reading is an excerpt from a larger work called The Dark Mistress’s Desire.” Then she began to read. “‘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.’”