Dan Poblocki - The Stone Child

Eddie blushed. “Why do you think she’s a freak?”

“Look at her.”

“Because she dresses in black?”

“Well… yeah. And she doesn’t have any friends.”

Eddie knew what that felt like. “That doesn’t mean she’s a freak.”

“If you say so,” said the boy. He tugged at his belt loop anxiously. After a moment, he said, “I’m Harris. Harris May. From the bookstore yesterday?”

“Uh, yeah, I remember you,” said Eddie. “I’m Eddie.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you lived here?” said Harris. “In Gatesweed,” he added.

“I didn’t really have time,” said Eddie. “You sorta took off.”

Harris blushed. “Yeah. Sorry about that. I never saw you before. Everyone knows everyone else in this town, but sometimes weird people pass through… I thought you were-”

“One of them?” said Eddie. “Gee, thanks.”

Harris laughed. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just… Wally was watching you.”

“Wally?” said Eddie.

“The one cop this town can afford to keep on its force,” said Harris. “He doesn’t like Olmstead hunters.” “Olmstead hunters?”

“Fans. They’re my mom’s biggest customers. Nobody else ever really comes to Gatesweed. When you mentioned the Olmstead Curse stuff…” He sighed. “Wally had stopped by in the morning, before you showed up. He spent, like, an hour interrogating me about the new graffiti in the park. He thinks I had something to do with it.”

“Did you?”

Harris smirked. “No,” he said simply. “It’s actually really annoying. Every few months something else appears. Wally usually blames me.”

“‘The Woman Is Watching’… Does the graffiti have something to do with the Olmstead… Curse?” Since Harris just mentioned the word, Eddie figured it was okay to say it now too.

“That’s sort of hard to explain… and the bell’s about to ring,” Harris said, glancing down the hallway. “Which way are you walking?”

Eddie shrugged. “Not sure. Mr. Weir’s English class?”

Harris nodded. “This way. Come on.”

Eddie closed his locker and spun the combination. His heart raced, partly because he thought he might start finding answers to his Olmstead questions, but also because Harris actually seemed pretty nice. He didn’t want to screw things up by saying something stupid like “tuba melt” again.

Leading them down the hallway, Harris continued, “So you really don’t know anything about the stuff written in that book you showed me?”

“No,” said Eddie. “Other than the fact that it’s some sort of code I can’t figure out by myself. I showed it to the librarian in town yesterday. She started acting really weird.”

“What did she do?” said Harris, surprised.

“She said she couldn’t help me,” said Eddie.

“Did you show it to anybody else?”

“Only my parents. They’re the ones who gave it to me,” said Eddie. “Do you know anything about the code?”

Harris shook his head. “Not the code…” He paused for a few seconds, then quickly and quietly said, “You have to promise not to tell anyone I said anything. It’s really important, because I could get in a lot of trouble… Some people in town don’t like that my mom still sells Olmstead books. They’d rather just forget Nathaniel Olmstead ever existed. Stupid. Sort of hard when his books are, like, everywhere. There’s been talk about shutting down the bookstore. Wally’s looking for any excuse.”

Eddie didn’t hesitate before answering, “I won’t say anything to anyone about anything.” The hallways were starting to empty. He noticed the room number he was looking for on the door to his right.

“You don’t have anything to do after school today, do you?” said Harris.

“Not yet.”

“Good.” Harris smiled. “I hope you rode here on that bike I saw you riding yesterday. You’re going to need it.”

After the last bell, Eddie called his mother and told her he was hanging out with a friend, then the two boys rode their bikes up into the Gatesweed Hills. Black Ribbon Road carved a twisted path through their dark valleys. They headed in the direction from which his family had come on moving day. Eddie wasn’t sure where Harris was taking him, but at this point it almost didn’t matter-he was having fun. In Heaver-hill, the roads had never zigzagged like this, and the kids had never asked him to come along.

While they rode, Harris told Eddie about growing up in Gatesweed. He explained that most of their classmates lived on the outskirts of town, out in the farm country. He and his mother had never lived anywhere other than here, and he couldn’t really imagine what it would be like to leave. Eddie told Harris about the car accident, leaving out the part when he’d thought the animal was a monster. He didn’t want to sound like a freak. He mentioned the weird people he’d seen in Gatesweed so far-the policeman, the tow truck guy, the librarian. Harris nodded, as if he knew exactly what Eddie was talking about. He agreed that some people in the town could be a little paranoid and protective of each other in a way.

They rode in silence for a while before Harris brought up Nathaniel Olmstead’s books. They’d both read all of them at least twice. Harris told him that his favorite one was The Ghost in the Poet’s Mansion. He really loved the part about the secret passage behind the kitchen cabinet that led to the magical library. Eddie told him that his favorite book was The Rumor of the Haunted Nunnery . The way Ronald Plimpton solved all the riddles was so exciting. Harris disagreed that Ronald was an expert. He insisted that Ronald had gotten all of the most helpful information from his grandfather.

Eddie noticed that Harris was a little sensitive about who liked the books better, so he made sure not to argue about it. Eddie didn’t want to blow a potential friendship, so he changed the topic to Nathaniel Olmstead himself. He asked Harris what he thought might really have happened to him.

“I’m not sure. Some people say he got in some sort of trouble and decided to hide for a while.”

“From who? The librarian?”

“Yeah… right!” Harris stopped and stood on his bike in the road.

On the right was the tall rusty iron fence the tow truck had driven by on Saturday. It was set back in the woods about thirty yards from the road, stretching about a hundred feet in both directions. Farther ahead was a small gate. Someone had chained it shut. Nathaniel Olmstead’s house sat on the grassy clearing at the top of the hill. The boys stood at the base of the overgrown driveway. Beyond the gate, the road curved around the steep slope and disappeared into the trees. Gnarled vines hung from the branches, and brown grass grew in patches out of the pebbly dirt.

At the gate, Eddie was certain they would not be able to go any farther. But Harris got off his bike, hiked into the brush, pushed aside some of the thick vines, and revealed a gap wide enough for them to squeeze through one at a time.

“We’re going in?” asked Eddie, suddenly remembering the animal his father had hit only two days earlier. “Is it safe?”

“Hmm,” said Harris. “Probably not. But I can’t show you what you need to see if we don’t. Come on, we’ll leave our bikes here.”

“Won’t someone see them?” All of a sudden, Eddie felt nervous. The faces of the people he’d met in Gatesweed scowled at him when he closed his eyes. “We’ll get in trouble.”

“Lay it down flat. You can’t see them from the road. Believe me, I’ve checked.”

“Then you’ve been here before?” Eddie asked.

Harris rested his bike behind a small evergreen bush. “What do you think?” he said.