After falling down the stairs, Eddie refused to sleep in his own bedroom. Even shoved between his parents, Eddie’s mind had churned with frightening images all night long. He hadn’t slept either.
He slumped into the chair next to Harris and across from Maggie.
“So?” said Harris, taking a bite of his peanut butter sandwich. “How did it go? Do you know what happened to Nathaniel Olmstead?”
Eddie shook his head. “I didn’t finish.”
“Didn’t finish?” said Maggie. “Why not?”
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.