by Dan Poblocki
Eddie took a deep breath and told them everything that had happened, starting with the face he saw in the library table yesterday afternoon and ending with his horrifying encounter with the Woman. After Eddie finished his story, Harris slumped over onto the cafeteria table and threw his arms over his head.
“What’s wrong?” said Maggie.
“Don’t you get it?” said Harris, turning his head slightly to speak. “The legend of the woman in the woods? Like all the other monsters that have attacked us for whatever reason—touching the water at the lake, picking the flower, going into the woods at night—now she’s coming for Eddie. She followed him down from the statue in the Nameless Woods, and she’ll haunt him until he’s totally gone bonkers!”
“Stop scaring him.” Maggie slapped Harris’s shoulder and rolled her eyes before looking at Eddie. “You’re not going bonkers,” she said. “She came to you for a specific reason. She doesn’t want to drive you crazy. She wants you to leave her alone.” She paused, thinking. “Didn’t you say she told you to read something less frightening? Maybe she was trying to scare you so you’d stop reading The Enigmatic Manuscript.”
Eddie bit at his bottom lip. “Should we stop? I mean … now that we’ve read about what she can do to people in The Wish of the Woman in Black … it seems really stupid to keep going.”
Harris sat up. “We can’t just stop! Not now that we’re so close to finding out what happened to Nathaniel Olmstead. He obviously did something that made her mad. If he’s in trouble … maybe we can help him.”
“Why?” said Maggie.
The boys looked at her like she was crazy.
“He said it himself,” she continued. “The creatures came through the door—whatever door he’s talking about, I don’t know—but he said it’s his fault. Maybe he doesn’t deserve our help.”
As he sat at the lunch table, images of the Woman in Black flashed through Eddie’s memory and he shuddered. But maybe Maggie was right. He pulled his book bag onto his lap. “There’s so much more to the story now that you won’t understand until you actually read it for yourselves.” He took out the two photocopied packets he’d made for Harris and Maggie. “You’ll have to tell me what you think.” He handed one to each of them. “Try to read it all if you can,” he said. “We’ll meet at the end of the day and keep working.”
After school, they quietly walked to Harris’s house together. Both Harris and Maggie had managed to finish reading everything Eddie had written. Despite the Woman’s threat, they were intrigued and seemed excited to find the answers to Nathaniel Olmstead’s mystery. They all agreed: they might as well try to read a little bit more.
At the bookstore, they found Frances standing on the front porch, looking at the wooden deck beneath her feet.
“What’s the matter, Mom?” said Harris, stopping at the bottom of the steps.
When Frances turned around, Eddie could see that her cheeks were blotchy red. She’d been crying. Embarrassed, she quickly wiped her face. “Oh, Harris,” she said, “you brought friends.” She came to the top step, reached out, and held on to the balustrades on either side of the stairs. When Harris tried to peer around her, she moved, as if trying to block his view. “Wait,” she whispered.
“What the heck!” said Harris, rushing up the steps and pushing past her. She stepped aside. Eddie could see what she’d been trying to hide. Someone had spray-painted black graffiti on the floor of the porch.
The Woman Is Coming for You. …
Frances covered the graffiti with an old rug. She told them she would be busy with several book orders upstairs, so they had the place to themselves. Since the bookstore was empty, they organized themselves at a quiet table in the back.
Eddie felt like the graffiti had been his fault. If he hadn’t picked the flower, the gremlin wouldn’t have attacked them. If the gremlin hadn’t attacked them, no one would have spread any rumors, and the vandals wouldn’t have targeted Harris’s store again.
Harris told him to forget about it. “It’s happened before,” he said. “It’ll happen again. Besides, it can be painted over.”
Looking at his friends, Eddie wondered if they weren’t all the class freaks now. At least they would be freaks together. The Exiled. In a twisted way, the three of them were like the Lilim now, weren’t they? Eddie kept the thought to himself.
They picked up their notebooks and pens. Eddie opened The Enigmatic Manuscript to the spot where he had been interrupted the night before. He laid The Wish of the Woman in Black open to its last page, where the code key was written. “We work together, like yesterday,” he said, more determined than ever.
After researching the legend of the key in Romania for nearly a month, Nathaniel finally returned to the United States. He felt ready to be home.
Once there, he started to dream about a small town nestled in a group of wooded hills. It was called Gatesweed. The image of the town was so beautiful, he felt compelled to look up the name, to see if, somehow, the place might truly exist. To his surprise, after searching an atlas in the local library, he located a town called Gatesweed that happened to be a two-hour drive southwest of Coven’s Corner. Having already traveled so far for inspiration’s sake, he thought that one more jaunt—for curiosity’s sake—couldn’t hurt.
When Nathaniel arrived in Gatesweed, he felt like he’d come home. The hills, the mills, the park, the shape of the town itself were all familiar. Something told him to stay. With a loan from his parents, Nathaniel bought a house in the hills outside the center of the town. The place had been abandoned for years and needed plenty of work, so the price was right.
As he worked on the house during the day, he was struck by the number of story ideas that began to come to him. With every board he tore up and every stone he replaced, another image seemed to pop into his brain. He wrote them down in his notebooks, trying to capture them before they got away.
In the midst of renovations, Nathaniel discovered a passageway in the fireplace that led to a series of catacombs under the house. He was frightened, yet intrigued, to explore the space. After several hours, he decided that it would be perfect for a private office. What better place to write creepy stories than in a secret room in the basement?
At night, Nathaniel continued to have strange dreams. Now, instead of dreaming about Gatesweed, he began to dream about the woods beyond the orchard. Just like his earlier compulsion to find Gatesweed, Nathaniel now felt the need to explore this new pastoral domain at the bottom of the hill behind his house.
The next day, I trudged over the small ridge and down into a wide, wooded flatland. I walked for almost ten minutes before coming upon a dirt clearing.
On the other side of the clearing, I could see a strange white figure staring at me—a statue of a pretty young girl. Her face was pure white, but it was her eyes that caught my attention. Something about her gave me the chills. She held a book out to me. On the spine was carved a peculiar symbol—like some sort of Hebrew letter. I was shocked. Was this the letter, Chet, I’d read about in Romania? Looking closer, I noticed images of strange creatures carved into the base on which she stood. My suspicions began to materialize, like ghosts all around me.
I thought I heard a faint voice speaking unintelligible words into my ear; I dismissed it as a figment of my imagination. But the longer I watched the statue, the more I understood. Strange knowledge washed across my brain. I was standing on the brink of something huge. The evidence was unmistakable. The statue, the book in her hands, the symbol carved onto its cover, the images of the creatures dancing on the half-buried pedestal under the child’s bare feet. The words “oracle, henge, and monolith” repeated through my mind. These places truly existed—just like I’d read in The Myth of the Stone Children. And yet, reason would not allow me to believe that I had found a piece of the Garden’s wall.
Certainly, this was a powerful place. Its energy was palpable. But there must be some sort of explanation, I thought. I was certain that if I stood there l
ong enough, the answer would come to me.
I remembered the silver pendant the Romanian woman had given me. According to the texts I read, the archangel’s key had the ability to lead whoever possessed it to the places where Eden’s wall fell. Was it possible that the same thing had happened to me? If so, then my friend at the university had been wrong—the relic was not a fake. The pendant I had brought home was no mere souvenir. Looking into the stone child’s eyes, I knew that the key, which had once unlocked the Garden of Eden’s gate, was buried at the bottom of my sock drawer! The girl seemed to speak to me without words. The longer I stared at the statue, the more I felt I knew what I needed to do.
I walked all the way home, went upstairs to my bedroom, and removed the silver necklace from the drawer. It seemed to pulse in my hand with a cold heat. I was instantly filled with a great purpose. I knew then that the moment I had found this object, my destiny had been to come to Gatesweed and discover the statue in the woods—but there was something else, one final action I felt compelled to take.
I turned to a blank page in a notebook on my desk. Instinctively, I pressed the tip of the pendant to my notebook’s paper. To my surprise, a black line appeared like a pen mark. Then, for a reason I could not name, I drew the symbol that was carved into the stone child’s book.
Looking back, I now realize that at that moment, I had begun to tear a dangerous hole in the delicate fabric that protects our world from the mysterious ones that border it. I’d do anything now to take it all back.
“This is crazy,” said Eddie.
“Do you think he’s telling the truth?” said Maggie. “What if this is all just fiction?”
“After everything we’ve seen recently?” said Harris. “I think we can assume that he’s telling the truth.”
It had finally gotten dark out. Maggie cleared her throat and started rubbing her eyes. On the other side of the park, a car honked its horn. It was the first time since they’d opened the book that afternoon that they heard proof of the world outside their own private circle.
“Do you want some water?” Harris asked Maggie, who had been reading the last section aloud.
“No. I’m fine,” she said. “I actually feel like I don’t even really need the piece of paper to translate anymore.”
“What do you think is going to happen to him?” Eddie asked.
Harris closed his eyes, as if shutting out the inevitable conclusion.
Maggie shook her head. “I have an idea,” she said, “but I don’t want to spoil it.” Then she began where she had left off.
Using the pendant like a pencil, Nathaniel continued to write down bits and pieces of images and ideas—dark basements, secret keys to hidden doors, statues, ghosts, and demon dogs. From these notes, a story began to materialize.
Nearly a month after finding the statue in the woods, he began writing what would become his first novel, The Rumor of the Haunted Nunnery. After he finished, Nathaniel typed it up to send to agents and publishers. To his surprise, one of them wanted it, and shortly thereafter, it was published. He was thrilled that people were finally reading something he’d written.
He wrote all of the books using the pendant. On the first page, he wrote the title and his name. Below these words, he drew the Hebrew symbol. On the next page, he began the tale. If someone were to ask why he wrote the books that way, he wouldn’t have been able to provide a logical answer. It was something he just had to do—as if the silver pendant, or the statue in the woods, or something was providing unconscious instruction. But the process worked. When he used the pendant to write, he became especially inspired. He felt that if he questioned why, it might all go away, so he stopped asking questions. For a while.
As the books continued to sell, Nathaniel began to read reports in the newspapers of strange occurrences in Gatesweed. Several pets had disappeared under mysterious circumstances. A few children claimed to have seen unusual animals wandering through the woods near Nathaniel’s driveway. Several people actually asserted that these animals had attacked them. A twelve-year-old boy named Jeremy Quakerly vanished from his bedroom in the middle of the night. Finally, the body of an elderly schoolteacher was found in the middle of a cornfield on one of the county roads past the mills. The incident was ruled an accident, but a rumor spread throughout Gatesweed that on the death certificate, the coroner had listed the cause of death as a fall from a great height. She had died in her bathrobe.
Nathaniel heard some people claim that these reports echoed what he had written in his stories, but he convinced himself they were coincidences. Or he attempted to, at least. Nathaniel understood that any writer has his share of critics, so he tried to ignore the cruel looks and harsh whispers that followed him in town.
He sometimes wandered through the woods behind the apple orchard, exploring the clearing where the mysterious statue stood. There, he contemplated his fortune. Was there validity to the rumors? What was he actually doing when he used the pen to write his stories? Was the legend of the archangel’s key actually true? Other than the fact that the piece of metal could write on paper, did it actually hold mystical properties like the scholars said it should? After all, a pencil could write on paper too. Nathaniel would stand at the edge of the statue’s clearing and shake his head in disbelief. He told himself that this world was meant to remain mysterious. Deep down, though, he believed it was easier to choose ignorance.
Everything changed one afternoon, years later, when I wandered near the Nameless Lake. Of course, I’d seen the small body of water before, having used it as a set piece for the end of The Rumor of the Haunted Nunnery. That day, I stepped onto the pebbly shoreline, allowing my boots to send small ripples out into the water, something I hadn’t done before. Some time later, several dogs leapt from the water and chased me halfway through the woods. By the time I’d made it home, my mind was racing. I couldn’t fathom what I’d seen. All the reports I’d read in the newspapers, all the unsolved crimes I’d dismissed as coincidence—the missing pets, the strange wild animal attacks, the child’s disappearance from his bedroom, the schoolteacher’s death—came flooding back. People in Gatesweed had whispered for years that I was responsible for the odd happenings around town. Now I’d seen it with my own eyes. Apparently, at least, my monster lake-dogs were real.
How could that be? All my doubts about the pendant were suddenly half erased. If the legend of the key was real, was it possible that using the pendant to write my books had somehow made the dogs appear in the woods behind my house? Was it possible that some of the other monsters from my books were real too? If the stone child supposedly marked a place where the fabric between the worlds is thin, maybe I had caused the fabric to rip? If that was true, was I responsible for everything that had happened?
I immediately went and hid the pendant in my basement. I needed to get away from it for a while, stop writing, take a break and think about everything.
Several days later, I was lying on my couch for an afternoon nap when I heard a noise that sounded like papers being shuffled. I realized that something was standing in the doorway to my kitchen. At first, I thought it was something in my eye, a piece of dust or an eyelash, but when I rubbed there, nothing happened. A dark patch filled the space where there should have been a stove and a sinkful of dirty dishes. I sat up as the dark patch took form. It was an old woman. Shadows swirled around her body like smoke. Her hair lapped at her face in waves as if a slight breeze blew through my house. Her mouth did not move, but I heard her voice clearly. It was old and reminded me of dust.
The Woman touched the door frame in which she stood. The door grew and the kitchen behind it disappeared into the flickering glow of an unseen fire. This place was no longer my house. I heard wings flapping and insects scuttling through the shadows. The walls grew dark and dripped with moisture.
The Woman’s eye sockets were black holes, but they focused on me intently.
“Who are you?” I asked. She didn’t answer me, but somehow I knew her. �
��Lilith?” I whispered. She smiled but said nothing to confirm my suspicion. Still, I understood what she wanted from me. She wished for me to release her—like I had released her children, I realized now.
“If I write you into a story, will you exist here, like the dogs that chased me through the woods?” I stumbled in my thoughts, afraid of the answer to my question. I remembered the reports of the unsolved crimes. I was terrified by the possibility of my own unwitting guilt. “Like—like the others I wrote about?”
She showed me the statue in the dark woods. The stone child glimmered, filling the clearing with cold blue radiance. In a burst of light, a pack of dogs surrounded the statue. With their eyes glowing red, the dogs dashed into the shadows. All at once, I saw images of other monsters manifesting in the clearing beside the illuminated girl. I now understood completely how the portal worked. As I finished each story, the statue glowed, the gate opened, and the creatures emerged.
The Woman spoke. “The key plays games with me.” Her dark voice jabbed into my chest, like a needle and thread. “Lost and found. Years passed. It brought you here to me. You have written the stories of my children. Now that they have all come through the gate in the woods, it is time for you to begin another story … mine.”
“And if I don’t?” I dared to speak.
The woman’s face changed—in it I saw myself locked in a dark room, water rising from the floor below; I saw myself in the middle of a haunted city, pale faces staring at me through grease-smudged storefronts; I saw myself falling into a pit as wide as the ocean and blacker than night, from which rose the steady screaming of a million tortured souls. The Woman reached out to me and laughed, her voice rising like a flurry of ravens swirling into a dark, dead sky.
