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.”
From the corner of the room came a low moan that slowly crumbled into an angry growl.
“Leave us alone,” said Harris, through his teeth.
Eddie refused to look.
Leaning forward, all three of them continued the translation.
It was then I realized I needed a new plan. I was in a mess of my own making. I had been so selfish and needed to fix the situation. Simply putting away my pen would not be enough. If I stopped writing her story, the Woman would drive me into madness and then wait for someone else to finish the job. Since I had started this catastrophe, I knew I would end it. Rather than wait for her to find me, I would find her.
But first, I needed to open the gate.
It took me a day to figure out how, but once I thought of it, the answer seemed obvious. I would write my own story using the pendant, the same way I had written all of my books. When I finished, the statue would glow blue and the portal would open for me. I would go through the gate, into the dark realm, and put an end to the Woman in Black before she had a chance to follow me home.
Eddie…, a voice said from the corner of the room.
Trembling, Eddie tried to ignore everything but The Enigmatic Manuscript. As he focused on the book and continued to work, the distractions began to diminish, as if the Woman in Black had no power if he simply didn’t acknowledge her presence.
In order for my plan to work, I needed to prepare. As I grasped the silver chain, I was certain that I would not be able to take anything with me-not the book, and most certainly not the pendant.
I knew I needed to write my story, but in leaving it behind, I understood how dangerous the book would be if it fell into the wrong hands. It would act as a set of indestructible instructions, a record of what I had done. Anyone who found and read it would know how to open the gate too. It had been easy enough for me to do it, even unwittingly. And if I failed to destroy the Woman in Black, if she destroyed me first, then there would still be the possibility for her to come through. I decided to write my story in a way that would be difficult to read and leave no evidence. I would need to write the story in code.
Grabbing the pendant, I hastily jotted down a code key in the blank space where I had stopped writing The Wish of the Woman in Black. I opened to the first page of an empty notebook from the local bookstore and drew the chet symbol, as usual. Then, using the new alphabet to translate as I wrote, I began my own story.
Only later did I realize my mistake. In using the pendant to write the code, I’d made it permanent. I knew I’d have to finish quickly, then hide The Wish of the Woman in Black and the code key somewhere no one would ever find it in my absence. A separate place, away from the book containing my own story. I decided to dig a hole underneath a stone in my basement. It seemed appropriate, like a character had done in The Witch’s Doom.