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.

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.