by Dan Poblocki
Eddie laughed and unzipped his bag. He reached inside and handed the hammer to Harris. “Hammer one. Boomerang zero.”
“Very funny.” Harris jammed the claw side of the hammer into the space between the stones. He jimmied it back and forth. It wiggled a tiny bit, but it wouldn’t give. “Dammit,” he said.
Eddie stood up. “Didn’t Gertie use a crowbar in the book? Maybe that, along with the hammer, will do it?”
“If we can find one, sure,” said Harris.
They picked through a few boxes in each corner of the room. Eddie searched near the empty doorway and felt that the darkness seemed to stare at him. Icy air crawled across the floor toward him. Frustrated and scared, Eddie scrambled away from the doorway. “This place is giving me the creeps.”
“Really?” said Harris sarcastically, glancing up from another box. “Whatever for?” Then he let out a yelp, and Eddie nearly fell over. “I found it!” He knelt near one of the empty dark doorways on the other side of the room, holding a small crowbar over his head.
“You’re going to give me a heart attack screaming like that!” said Eddie.
Harris shrugged.
They raced back to the center of the room. Harris hammered the end of the crowbar into the crevice, then, using it as a lever, he was able to lift the stone. After a few seconds, he slid it the rest of the way out of its bed. From inside the hole came a soft wheezing sound—like something trying to catch its breath. Eddie backed away as Harris leaned forward. “Don’t tell me you’re going to stick your hand in there?” Eddie said.
Harris nodded. “I’ve got to. There might be an answer inside.”
“There also might be a monster inside,” said Eddie.
Harris rolled his eyes, and before Eddie could stop him, he thrust his arm into the hole up to his shoulder. He scrunched up his face and grunted a bit. “I can feel something. … Eww!”
“Is it a monster?” asked Eddie, scrambling away from the hole.
“No. It’s not a monster, but, as a matter of fact, it is a little … moist.” He wrenched himself backward. In his hand, he clutched a small rectangular object. Using his coat sleeve, Harris brushed off the dust and dirt. “It looks like another notebook. Like the ones in the filing cabinet over there.”
There was something strange about the book in Harris’s hands. Its binding was damp, but somehow inside, the pages were dry. Harris’s flashlight gave the book a ghostly glow. He opened the cover.
As Eddie took a closer look, goose bumps rose all over his body. Inside the notebook was the familiar scratchy writing. And on the first page was the same symbol Nathaniel had drawn into the rest of the books.
“The Wish of the Woman in Black,” Harris read. “I haven’t read this one before.”
“An unpublished Nathaniel Olmstead book,” said Eddie. “Is this one written in code too?”
Harris’s hand trembled as he turned the page. He shook his head no. He stammered slightly as he read the first sentence aloud.
“‘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.’”
He glanced up from the page and raised one eyebrow. “I wonder why he buried this one under a rock?”
The Wish of the Woman in Black? Why did that sound familiar? thought Eddie.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said. “We’ll finish reading it somewhere else.”
“I don’t want to have to come back later, in case there’s something else we need from down here.” Harris glanced at the book in his hands. “See how far we get?”
“Before what?” said Eddie. He shuddered, sighed, then settled into his place on the cold floor.
Harris read. “‘The ancient people who long ago lived in Coxglenn had built a wall made out of fallen trees, dead bushes, branches, vines, and mud to try and keep her out. It had not worked. Now what was left of the brush barrier was broken by the lane that led into town. Stretching into the woods, its many sharp pieces reached and scratched at nothing, like a blind monster searching for prey. …’”
For the next hour, the boys sat in the basement and read the book by flashlight. Every twenty pages or so, whoever was reading handed the notebook off to the other. They both agreed that it was the scariest Nathaniel Olmstead book yet.
The characters in the book seemed to shriek across the blank movie screen in Eddie’s head, running in fear from the horrible Woman in Black, whose quiet rage made her arguably the most dangerous creature in the worlds of Nathaniel’s books. Whatever—or whoever—stood in her presence would rot slowly from the inside out.
Eddie thought the ending of the fifth chapter was especially scary. He didn’t want to stop reading, even though his legs were starting to go numb.
One night, when Dylan lay in bed staring at the ceiling, he heard a noise downstairs. It sounded like something scratching at the walls. He thought it might be a mouse or a squirrel that had accidentally found its way inside. He threw the covers off his bed, put on his bathrobe and slippers, and made his way down the stairs. When he flicked the light switch in the living room, nothing happened. The moon was new, so the room was pitch-black. The scratching continued from the other side of the room.
“Mom?” Dylan called up the stairs. “Dad?” He hoped they would come down, but they did not answer.
A horrible odor filled the darkness. Seconds later, Dylan heard low, inhuman laughter. Something stood in the living room with him, and Dylan could hear its quick, shallow breath. The scratching grew louder and started to inch closer.
He froze. Thinking it was a dream, he pinched himself, but he was horrified to realize that he was already awake.
“Eddie,” Harris whispered. “Did you hear that?”
Eddie looked up from the page. He’d become so enthralled with the story, he’d begun to forget where he was. “Hear what?”
“It sounded like …” Harris stared off into the shadows through one of the stone archways in the nearby wall. Then he shook his head. “Forget it. Just keep reading.”
Eddie allowed himself to stare at the darkness all around him for a few seconds, listening for whatever sound Harris thought he’d heard. The silence of the basement was hypnotic. Finally, he picked up the book again.
Dylan opened the cabinet next to the potted palm and found a candle and a matchbook. He struck the tip of a match, and the spark erupted into the darkness. He lit the candlewick. The flame flickered tenuously before settling into stillness. Looking around the room, he didn’t see anything or anyone who might have made such laughter. But the horrible stench grew stronger. It was coming from the wall near the fireplace.
Cautiously, Dylan crept toward the mantel. When he reached the oriental rug in front of the fireplace, he noticed two strange lumps. Bending down, he could see the lumps were piles of familiar clothing. He trembled as he realized what he had found. His mother’s bathrobe was wet and soiled. His father’s pajamas smelled like rotten meat. Something terrible had happened to his parents. The rug underneath the laundry was dark, and the flickering candlelight revealed an oily sheen. Dylan held his hand to his nose to keep himself from becoming ill. Suddenly, the candlelight was out, and he was thrown into darkness.
“What’s that nasty smell?” said Harris, interrupting once more.
Eddie paused. After a moment, he smelled it too. “It’s almost sweet … like the garbage bins next to the parking lot at school. Where is it coming from?”
“All around,” said Harris. Then he looked at the book in Eddie’s hands. “Sort of like … exactly what’s happening to Dylan in the story.”
Eddie felt sick, and it wasn’t from the stench. He held out the book to Harris. “Y-your turn?” he stammered.
Harris took the book, smiling wearily as he began to read.
In the darkness, something brushed against his leg. Then something pulled his slipper from his foot. Dylan stumbled backward, turned, an
d ran. He scrambled along the wall to the front door.
Whatever had taken his slipper slithered across the floor behind him. He fumbled with the doorknob, and he flung himself into the night.
The thing chased him all the way down the driveway. Up the road to the right, Dylan saw headlights approaching. He waved his hands, trying to flag down the car. The light grew blinding, and the engine roared louder and louder. He realized it was not going to stop. From the shadows near the end of the driveway, a dark shape leapt at him. He jerked his body out of the way and fell on the far side of the road, just as the car sped by. It missed Dylan by inches. He heard a horrible wet thump and the squeal of tires.
A car door opened. Dylan heard boots on gravel, and a deep voice called, “You all right?”
Dylan stood up and shouted, “Didn’t you see me?”
A short, thin man stood next to a pickup truck. “Sorry, man,” he said, “I just came off my shift. Didn’t expect to see a kid in a bathrobe in the middle of the road at this hour.” The man looked down and then shouted. “Aww, geez, what the heck did I run over?” In the middle of the road lay a black lump about a foot in diameter. It was wet and shiny in the truck’s headlights. “It’s not yours, is it?”
Mesmerized by the lump in the road, Dylan shook his head.
“Some kid is going to be really unhappy tomorrow morning. Poor little thing,” said the man, taking a step closer to examine the mess.
The man bent over as Dylan shouted, “Get away from it!” But it was too late. A slick humanlike hand shot out of the wet puddle and grabbed the man’s collar. Dylan watched the man’s face turn dark and oily, his skin seeming to melt away like wax. Not even his screaming could be heard over the sound of a woman’s fierce laughter, ringing across the Coxglenn Hills.
Harris tossed the book to the floor. His eyes grew wide and he stifled a small whimper. “I just thought of something. …”
“What’s the matter?” asked Eddie, sitting up straight.
“The Woman,” Harris said, staring at the book.
Eddie’s stomach turned to ice. Of course! That’s why the title had sounded so familiar. The Wish of the Woman in Black.
“Eddie, do you think …?” He didn’t need to finish. Eddie had already started nodding.
It was her—the woman from the Gatesweed legend. The ghostly woman the townspeople said haunted the woods. The Watching Woman from the graffiti.
“You know what this means?” Harris continued.
Eddie nodded again. “Nathaniel did write a story about her, after all.” Looking around the basement, he felt the shadows pressing on him. He shuddered as he came to a terrible understanding. “Does this mean that the Woman in Black is real? Just like the gremlins and the dogs in the lake?”
Harris only nodded slightly, as if he’d come to the same conclusion. “Maybe people in town aren’t crazy. Maybe they really have seen her. Maybe she is watching?”
Eddie took a deep breath, then exhaled, trying to remain calm. He spoke slowly and evenly. “Maybe there’s a connection between the handwritten books we found here in the basement and the creatures we’ve seen in Gatesweed. …”
“What kind of connection?” said Harris.
Eddie shook his head. “Maybe he knew that some of his monsters were real. Did he think the Woman was real too? Could he have buried this book under the stone because he thought her story was too scary?” Suddenly, Eddie had a terrible feeling. “If it was too scary for him” he whispered, “then what the heck are we doing here?”
Harris continued to stare intently at the book on the floor. “We’re doing what Nathaniel Olmstead would have wanted us to. Solving the mystery.” He picked up the book again and turned to where he’d left off, but when he flipped the next page to continue reading the story, he yelped.
“What’s wrong?” said Eddie, shining his flashlight at Harris.
Harris held his hand in front of his face to block the light, but he didn’t hesitate before showing Eddie what was on the next page.
P B Z D Y F R H V J W L U
A Q C O E T G S I X K N M
“No way,” said Eddie. Quickly, he picked up The Enigmatic Manuscript from the floor. Opening the cover, he compared the strange writing to the letters they’d just found in The Wish of the Woman in Black. After a few seconds, he said, “Why would Nathaniel Olmstead have written the code in this book too?”
“I’m not sure.” Harris pressed his lips together and flipped one more page. He looked distressed. He held up the book and showed Eddie. The rest of the pages were blank. “This is where it ends. The Wish of the Woman in Black is incomplete. He buried the book without finishing it.”
Eddie felt empty. “That’s everything he wrote?” he said. “But how does the story end? And why doesn’t he actually explain what the stupid code means?” He tossed The Enigmatic Manuscript on the floor next to the hole, where it landed with a soft whap. “We were so close to finding the key. What are we supposed to do now?”
Something on the other side of the room sneezed, and the boys froze. The noise had come from the doorway near the secret fireplace entry.
After a few seconds of silence, Eddie whispered, “H-hello?”
Harris seemed to come to his senses and suddenly whipped his flashlight toward the doorway. “Who’s there?” he said. Then he reached into his bag and pulled out his boomerang. If Eddie hadn’t been so terrified, he might have laughed at the image of the kangaroo shaking in Harris’s hand.
Harris’s light illuminated a shapeless dark figure. It scrambled backward against the wall near the ladder. Its clothes were black. Its white hands clutched at its pale face.
Was it the Woman in Black? Had she finally come after them, to turn them into piles of black ooze just like she had done to the characters in Nathaniel Olmstead’s book? But then Eddie quickly realized he was wrong. The Woman in Black would never cower from her victims.
“Would you please stop shining that in my eyes?” asked the figure.
“Who are you?” asked Harris. His fear seemed to drain away as he stood.
The figure brought her hands away from her face, squinting at the light, as Harris ignored her plea and continued to shine it at her. Finally, Eddie reached out and lowered Harris’s arm so that the beam of light fell on the floor at her feet. “It’s Maggie,” said Eddie. “Maggie Ringer.”
“You scared the hell out of us!” Harris screamed. His voice echoed through the underground chamber. He raised the flashlight and shone it at her face again. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same question,” said Maggie harshly. She stared at them defiantly, flaring her nostrils like a cornered animal. After a few seconds, she lowered her voice and said, “If you take that light out of my eyes, I’ll answer.”
Harris grunted and lowered the light again.
“I was coming home from school this afternoon,” said Maggie, “riding my bike up Black Ribbon, when I saw you guys ahead, crawling through the gap in the fence at the bottom of the Olmstead driveway. I just wanted to find out where you were going, so I followed you.”
“You shouldn’t have,” said Harris, carefully placing The Wish of the Woman in Black next to where The Enigmatic Manuscript lay on the floor. “This is a dangerous place.”
“Then why are you guys here?” asked Maggie, even though she looked like she already had an idea.
“It’s a secret,” Eddie said. He felt his face flush, imagining the looks he would get in school tomorrow if anyone found out what they had been doing here. “You can’t tell anyone.”
“How long have you been down here?” asked Harris. “That stench. Maybe it was …”
Maggie blinked at him. “What, me? Thanks, but no. I smelled it too, when I finally crept down the ladder a few minutes ago. I was listening to you guys from the mouth of the fireplace. For a while I could hear you really well, but then you started talking quieter. So I came closer.”
“Maybe the stench really was from
—” Eddie was interrupted when Harris poked him in the arm.
“The Woman in Black?” said Maggie. She shook her head. “I already knew that you were up to something really strange, but this beats all. Codes? Monsters? And all these books you were talking about? Whatever you’re doing, it’s creeping me out.”
Harris said, “That’s why you shouldn’t have followed us.”
“I’m sorry!” she said angrily. “But what I saw in the library last night was totally crazy. I’d been doing my homework, and then you guys showed up with that … little monster following you. And then … those weird words you spoke, Eddie. You can’t expect me to just be like, Oh, okay, whatever … duh!”
“It’s still none of your business,” said Harris.
“Maybe we should go,” suggested Eddie.
“Good idea,” said Harris. “You and me will finish this later.”
Eddie bent down and picked up the books from the floor, steering clear of the dark hole. It almost seemed to sigh at him as he backed away from it.
Harris stomped toward the doorway where Maggie stood. “Excuse us, please!” he said, brushing past her and stepping onto the bottom rung of the ladder, which was bolted to the stone wall.
When Eddie followed, Maggie looked at him and said, “I said I was sorry.”
“It’s okay,” whispered Eddie. “It’s hard to explain it all right now.” As Harris climbed up the ladder in front of him, he turned around and scowled.
