by Dan Poblocki
I woke up on my couch. Sweating. My chest hurt. I was breathing hard, and my legs felt heavy. The Woman was gone. My house looked the same as always. I wondered what had just happened. Had I been dreaming? Was I going crazy?
I sat on the couch and contemplated my predicament. If I didn’t listen to her, would she haunt me forever with such visions? If what I had seen was not a dream, as the evidence overwhelmingly suggested, then I was, in fact, guilty for releasing the monsters, the legendary Lilim, one at a time from their purgatorial prisons. Simply holding the pendant had equipped me with the unconscious knowledge of how to use it. I was certain now that the pendant had brought me to Gatesweed in the first place. When I used the pendant to write my stories, it acted like a key. Each story had opened a door in the woods, where the stone child held her empty book, like she had when she stood beside Eden’s gate. This new door led to places where the monsters were real. No wonder the old Romanian woman had wanted to get rid of the pendant! How many cursed hands had it passed through over the years? To realize I held such power in my fingertips was more terrifying than my worst nightmare.
I thought about what I should do. I was certainly willing to put down the pendant, to stop writing, or at least try to write something without monsters in it. I had never been able to do so before, but I was older now, with more experience. I had become a different person. Hadn’t I?
However, if I refused to tell her story, would the Woman send me more bad dreams? Was that the worst she could do?
At that point, I was certain I could handle it. That was before—
The lights in the back of the store flickered, and Maggie stopped reading. The three kids looked toward the door in the rear wall. It was open a crack. No one said anything, but Eddie knew what they were all feeling. The pen in Maggie’s hand was shaking. Harris clutched the table. Eddie’s leg started to twitch. The big bookshelf on the left side of the door obscured the overhead light, so it was impossible to see inside the storage room. Blackness gaped through the crack in the doorway.
“Mom?” called Harris, his voice shaky.
“I thought you said she was upstairs,” said Eddie.
“Is there someone back there?” Maggie whispered.
Eddie and Harris glanced at each other.
“You know what?” said Harris. “I sort of hope so. Because if someone is back there, that means that something isn’t.”
“Maybe it’s nothing,” said Eddie. “Sometimes in old buildings, lights flicker by themselves. Right?”
“Right,” said Harris and Maggie, sounding too enthusiastic, as if they were trying to convince themselves.
“But maybe we should finish reading the book somewhere else?” said Maggie.
The lights fluttered again, briefly. Eddie remembered what had happened in his bedroom the night before. He shuttled his chair closer to Maggie. He didn’t want to finish reading the book at all.
“I think that’s a good idea. Let’s go upstairs,” said Harris, sliding his chair back and standing up.
The lights in the back of the store suddenly went out. The only lights on now were the two table lamps near the front door.
Eddie knocked his own chair backward as he stood. It banged against the hardwood floor, sending shivers across his skin. Then he saw Maggie’s face as she stared toward the street, and his shivers became an arctic chill.
“You guys …,” she said, nodding toward the town green.
When Eddie turned around, he saw only his reflection in the window. “What’s wrong?” he said.
“The lights in the park … They’ve gone out too,” said Harris.
Eddie glanced toward the back of the store. It might have been his imagination, but he thought he could see movement through the open door. He turned around, refusing to look.
“Not only the park,” said Maggie, squinting, “but it looks like the whole town has gone dark.”
“We need to get out of here,” said Harris. He shoved The Enigmatic Manuscript under his arm and grabbed the notebook and pen. “Now.”
Eddie nodded. He snatched his book bag and ran toward the front door. As he reached for the knob, Maggie ran up beside him and tugged on his sleeve.
“Wait,” she said. “We don’t know what’s out there.”
Suddenly, Eddie heard a familiar voice in the back of the store. Why? it said in a soft, singsong manner. Eddie … why do you want to hurt me …?
“Do—do you guys hear that?” said Eddie.
“Hear what?” said Harris.
The two table lamps in the store began to flicker as well. Over Maggie’s shoulder, Eddie saw someone moving through the shadows, reaching out toward him. His voice caught in his throat as he turned around and threw the front door open into the night. Then he ran.
As he hurtled across the front porch and down the stairs, he heard his friends behind him. They leapt from the last step onto the sidewalk, hopped over the curb, and skidded into the middle of the street.
When they turned around, they saw that the only light in the entire town spilled dimly from the windows of The Enigmatic Manuscript. All Eddie could see of the other buildings on Center Street were silent silhouettes against a starless sky.
Inside, the store now seemed empty. Those vague arms Eddie had seen reaching from the shadows were gone. Eddie glanced over his shoulder to the park.
Could she have followed them out of the store? Could she be with them out here in the dark street?
“What’s happening?” said Maggie.
“I heard her talking to me,” said Eddie. “She asked me why I want to hurt her.”
“I thought I heard someone talking in the store too,” she said. “But I figured it was my imagination.”
“The Woman in Black,” said Harris, crossing his arms over his chest. His voice started to rise. “She’s coming for all of us now?”
“We need to stay calm,” said Eddie. “We still have some light left. If we stay quiet, maybe we can sit here and—”
“Are you crazy?” said Harris. “You want to sit in the middle of the cold dark street and keep reading this stupid thing? No way! I want to find someplace nice and bright to hide.”
“That’s it,” said Maggie quietly.
“What do you mean?” said Harris. “What’s it?”
The light from the store gave Maggie’s eyes a fierce glow. “She keeps asking Eddie why he wants to hurt her. But why does she think he’s hurting her? What have we been doing for the past couple days?”
Eddie and Harris glanced at each other. “All we’ve been doing is reading Nathaniel Olmstead’s book,” said Harris.
“Right!” Maggie pointed at the book Harris had tucked under his arm. The Enigmatic Manuscript. “When Eddie was translating the book last night, he only got so far because she interrupted him. Just like we were interrupted right now.” Maggie thought about that. “Maybe she’s afraid of what we’ll learn if we finish reading the book.” She smiled. “That only makes me want to read it more.”
The lights inside the store began to flicker again, this time dimming almost all the way out.
“We won’t be able to read anything if the lights go out,” said Eddie. He huddled closer to his friends.
Harris cried out, pointing toward the apartment above the store. The light turned on in the kitchen window. Frances’s silhouette appeared. She raised her hands to the glass, as if trying to block the glare to see outside. Then she lifted the pane and leaned over the windowsill. She didn’t seem to notice that the entire town had fallen into darkness. “Are you kids hungry?” she called to them.
“Mom!” shouted Harris. “Watch out!”
Behind Frances, another silhouette loomed. It rose and expanded, filling the bright kitchen window with shadow until the room went dark.
“Mom!” Harris cried again.
Then all the lights went out. Downstairs. Upstairs. Eddie’s body stiffened as Maggie clutched at his arm. He could barely see her face.
“Mom! She’s
behind you!” Harris called as he started running toward the side door.
“Harris!” Maggie shouted.
“Don’t go in there!” Eddie called to Harris’s running silhouette. Then, before he could stop himself, he chased after his friend. Maggie followed close behind. He heard the screen door slam. Eddie followed the sound, yanking the door open. Maggie caught it from behind him. She held it open as Eddie stared up into the darkness. He could hear Harris tripping up the steps. He had to turn off his brain so that he would not imagine Harris falling into the cold arms of the looming silhouette.
“Mom! I’m coming!” Harris cried.
Despite being unable to see, Eddie took the stairs two at a time. Using the handrail, he yanked his way to the top and flung himself through the doorway.
But the overhead light in the kitchen blinded him.
Eddie found Harris in the middle of the room hugging Frances. Harris heaved sobs into his mother’s neck, and Frances glanced at Eddie, as if to say, What are you kids up to?
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.
Now that I had stopped putting her story on paper, my visions of the Woman in Black were not confined to my dreams. Everywhere I looked, I could see her, feel her. It seemed that the unfinished manuscript allowed the Woman in Black to appear in Gatesweed, even though the gate was not yet open to her. She could not physically manifest in our world, but it was like I had pulled back the curtain on the window into her world. She enjoyed showing herself to me—reminding me of my promise with the threat of her presence.
“Maybe we were right!” said Maggie. “I think she’s still only looking at us through the … the window, trying to scare us. She can’t hurt us. She’s not real like the other monsters. Not yet anyway.”
“So last night,” said Eddie, “in my parents’ bedroom—”
“It was an illusion,” said Maggie. “Just like what happened downstairs a few minutes ago. Harris, your mother didn’t see what we saw. The lights in town never really went out. The Woman in Black only made us believe they did.”