The Stone Child Read online

  For my mom and dad

  1

  The blue station wagon had just come around a sharp bend in the road when the creature stepped out of the woods. Eddie was the first to see it—a blur of black hair and four long, thin legs. It looked at him with red-rimmed yellow eyes and a gaping mouth full of sharp teeth.

  “Watch out!” Eddie cried from the backseat.

  His father smashed his foot against the brake pedal. The car began to fishtail; the tires squealed. Eddie felt himself jerk forward against the seat belt as several of the boxes stacked on the backseat of the car tumbled onto the floor beside him. The book he had been reading flew out of his hands and smacked against the seat in front of him. Eddie’s mother clutched at the ceiling and let out a yelp. Then came the horrible crunch as the front of the car crashed into the creature, sending it flying into the greenish darkness of the woods. The right side of the car skidded off the road and shuddered over several small shrubs, before lurching to a stop a few feet from a mossy boulder. Through the windshield, Eddie watched steam hiss from underneath the car’s mangled hood.

  “Is everyone all right?” asked Eddie’s father after several seconds of stunned silence. Eddie had to think about that—his shoulder burned where the seat belt had caught him. He felt like he’d had his breath knocked out of him—partly because of what he’d seen step in front of the car. Its horrible face was lodged in his mind.

  “I’m okay,” said Eddie’s mother.

  “Me too,” Eddie managed to say.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Eddie’s father. “I didn’t even see it coming.”

  “Look at the front of the car,” said Eddie’s mother, removing her seat belt. “How could a deer do so much damage?”

  “Too big for a deer … I think it was a bear,” said Eddie’s father, leaning forward over the steering wheel, peering into the trees where the animal had disappeared. He opened his door.

  The car sat at the top of an incline, hugging the curve of the wooded, winding road. “Stay inside,” said Eddie suddenly. He was certain the thing had been neither a deer nor a bear. His father looked at him like he was crazy. “Drive away,” Eddie insisted.

  “I need to see the damage. The moving trucks are probably already waiting for us at the new house.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Edgar Fennicks, don’t be ridiculous!” said Eddie’s mother. “It’s probably injured … or dead. Your father hit it really hard.” His parents both got out of the car and closed their doors, leaving him alone in the backseat. They marched to the front of the car and examined the bumper. Eddie’s father threw his hands into the air in frustration. His mother covered her mouth and turned away toward the woods. Eddie looked at the woods too. The foliage was dense, but other than the wind rustling the branches, there was no sign of movement in the area where the creature had landed.

  Eddie didn’t want to be alone. Reluctantly, he opened his door and stepped into the broken bushes.

  It was the beginning of September, and the afternoon air was cool. From the top of the hill, Eddie could see the slate-gray sky hanging over the rolling hills like a tattered blanket. The only sound he heard was the wind through the trees. It sounded like someone whispering a secret. Maybe the thing was dead after all. The thudding sound the car had made when it hit the animal echoed in Eddie’s head, giving him chills. He zipped up his blue hooded sweatshirt.

  When he made it to the front of the car, he could see why his father was so upset. The right side had been crushed. The headlight was embedded in the front tire. Tufts of black hair were stuck to the crumpled metal. From the left side of the car, the bumper protruded like a broken bone. “Whoa,” said Eddie. His parents merely shook their heads.

  After a moment, Dad wandered back to the driver’s-side door, got in, and started the car. “Watch it!” he called, shifting the gear into reverse. When he pressed the gas pedal, the axle cried out in a loud, piercing whine. He shook his head, turned the car off again, and grabbed his cell phone from the front seat.

  As his father called the police, Eddie stood with his mother at the edge of the woods. She whispered, “Don’t worry, Edgar. We’re almost home.”

  “I’m not worried,” said Eddie, even though he was, a little bit. His fingertips tingled, and the crunch of the metal resonated somewhere deep inside him. He would have been worried even if they hadn’t just gotten into a car accident, but he figured it was normal to feel that way on the day you were moving to a new town. Everything was uncertain. After his mother had lost her office job in Heaverhill, she wanted a change of scenery. At the end of the previous school year, Eddie had said goodbye to his old classmates without knowing he might not see them again for a while. His parents had made the decision to move quite quickly. He had no idea what his new house would look like, or what his new classmates would be like. Eddie had been feeling pretty overwhelmed all day—all month, in fact—and so on the car ride down from Heaverhill, he’d been rereading one of his favorite books, The Revenge of the Nightmarys. Reading familiar stories was comforting, even stories as scary as the ones Nathaniel Olmstead had written. “Do you really think it’s dead? Because … it looked like …”

  “Like what?” said Mom.

  “Like … a monster,” said Eddie, “or … or something.”

  “A monster?” Mom laughed. “I wish my imagination were half as wild as yours, Edgar. I’d be a bestselling novelist by now.”

  “Didn’t you see its face?” “I didn’t get a good look.”

  “Hey,” called Eddie’s father, “the cops are on their way with a tow truck. The officer I spoke with said we should probably wait inside the car.”

  “Why?” said Mom.

  “I told him I hit a bear.”

  “What did you tell him that for?”

  “Because it’s true!”

  “It wasn’t a bear. It didn’t look anything like a bear,” she said, stepping back toward the car. “Edgar seems to think it was a monster. I swear, the two of you are such a pair.”

  Eddie was about to follow her back to the car, when something in the distance down the road caught his eye, freezing him where he stood. Across the dip of the next valley, where the road descended, Eddie noticed a simple box of a house sitting on top of a grass-covered hill. A patchwork of tall trees, the leaves of which were turning in the wind, surrounded the nearby hills. The smoky peaks of the Black Hood Mountains were visible on the horizon. He knew he’d seen this place before, but where? A postcard? A book? A dream? The familiarity of the sight was surreal enough to knock away the image of the creature his father had struck with the car. He wandered to the faded yellow line on the road for a better view.

  A fat stone chimney, like an enormous gravestone, sprouted from the center of the house’s pitched slate roof. Five small windows spread across the top floor. On the bottom were four windows framing a broken door twisting away from its hinges. Unpainted gray shingles peeled away from the sides of the house. Brush and bushes and weeds obscured the rest of the building.

  His mouth went dry as he gasped. “No way,” he whispered to himself, suddenly realizing where he’d seen the house.

  “Edgar, you are going to get hit by a truck!” his mother called out the window from the passenger seat.

  Eddie pointed at the hill. “But—”

  “Come on,” said his father, leaning out the driver’s-side door. “Get in the car, bud.”

  Eddie stumbled to the car and climbed into the backseat.

  “What were you looking at?” Mom asked. “Did you hear something in the woods? That thing’s not still alive, is it?”

  He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he bent down and searched the floor for the book he’d been reading during the ride from Heaverhill. The
Revenge of the Nightmarys. It was underneath his mother’s seat.

  “Edgar, what’s wrong?” Mom said, peering at him from behind the blue vinyl headrest.

  He opened the book’s back cover and showed his parents the picture printed there. The man on the inside flap of the book jacket stood in front of a country house on top of a grassy hill. The windows were not broken. The weeds had not yet grown. The shingles were gray, and though they were not in perfect condition, they were in much better shape than the shingles on the house on the hill up the road. The fat stone chimney looked more like a monument than a gravestone, but still the resemblance was unmistakable. The man’s face was serious, but his ruffled brown hair and short beard gave him the appearance of a kind, creative soul. Under his picture, a brief biography explained that Nathaniel Olmstead lives in a small town in northwestern Massachusetts. He is an amateur astronomer, an ancient history buff, and a fan of monster movies. When his parents finished looking at the picture, they stared at him, confused.

  “Look …” Eddie pointed down the road.

  “Hey!” said Dad, finally noticing the house on the hill.

  Eddie had read somewhere that it had been empty for close to thirteen years, but it looked more like thirty.

  “Isn’t that odd …?” said Mom.

  “Is Gatesweed the town where Nathaniel Olmstead lived?” asked Eddie.

  “I don’t know,” said Dad, distracted. “Who’s Nathaniel Olmstead?”

  “Dad! He’s this guy!” Eddie pointed at the picture again. “He wrote all my favorite books. The Revenge of the Nightmarys. The Wrath of the Wendigo. The Ghost in the Poet’s Mansion. The Curse of the Gremlin’s Tongue. And tons more. Phantoms. Spirits. Creepy stuff like that.”

  “So that’s why you thought you saw a monster in the road,” said Mom, taking the book from him and examining the cover.

  Eddie blushed. “Maybe.”

  “This Olmstead person couldn’t possibly still live in that house,” said Dad.

  “Well, supposedly,” Eddie said, “he disappeared, like, thirteen years ago. No one knows what happened to him, or whether he’s even still alive. But his books are really popular. I’ve read all of them. At least twice.”

  “So his house is empty?” said Mom, glancing through the trees.

  “Certainly looks empty,” said Dad. “In that condition, who would live there?”

  “I don’t know,” said Mom. “Possibly people stuck on this road come nightfall.”

  “Very funny,” said Dad.

  “Might be inspiring for someone who writes spooky stories,” Eddie suggested.

  “Yeah,” said Dad, “if you don’t use water or electricity, you could get all the inspiration you’d ever need.”

  A police car came speeding around the corner in front of them. It screeched to a halt next to Dad’s car, facing the opposite direction. A frazzled old man in a wrinkled uniform sat behind the wheel. Long wisps of thin white hair struggled to hide his nearly bald head. His pinched eyes glared at them through thick glasses. He rolled down his window and motioned for Eddie’s father to do the same. “You folks all right?” he said.

  “We are, but the car’s not,” said Dad. “You want to take a look at it?”

  “Uh-uh.” The old man shook his head so hard his glasses went crooked. “Tow truck’s comin’. He’ll take care of you.” He grabbed a clipboard from the passenger seat and held it through the window. A sheet of paper was attached to it. Eddie’s father reached out through his own window and took it from him. “Fill this out for your insurance company. Drop it at the town hall when you get a chance.”

  “Well …,” said Dad, flustered, “I suppose I could just fill it out and give it to you now.”

  The old man shook his head again. “Tow truck’ll be here soon. I can’t wait around. … Got stuff to do.” The police car shuddered as he put it into gear. Without saying goodbye, he rolled up the window and jerked his car up the road into a fast k-turn. When he had turned the police car around, he sped back down the hill.

  Eddie’s parents stared at each other. “Could he have gotten out of here any faster?” said Dad.

  “Don’t worry about him,” said Mom, patting her husband’s arm. “Remember when we came down for the house closing, honey? That nice woman we met in that pretty little bookstore said Gatesweed was peppered with eccentric people. All part of the charm, right?”

  Through the windshield, Eddie watched the leaves in the forest flash white, their undersides whipped into a frenzy by the breeze. The trees parted and the house on the hill appeared again. It seemed to hold its breath, as if keeping a secret.

  A few minutes later, a beat-up black tow truck rumbled into view behind the blue station wagon. A young guy, who looked to be in his late twenties, hopped out and sauntered up the road on the driver’s side. He was tall and skinny. His tight black leather jacket was open, revealing a Metallica concert T-shirt. When he leaned toward Dad’s open window, his scraggly black hair hung below his shoulders. Eddie could smell him from the backseat—a mixture of lingering cigarette smoke and vanilla air freshener. Eddie’s parents cringed. The driver raised an eyebrow and smiled. “So … what did you hit?”

  2

  They all waited on the side of the road as the driver loaded the station wagon onto the tow truck’s crane. Eddie’s father explained what happened. The driver, who had introduced himself as Sam, listened, curious, nodding as Eddie’s father told him how odd the police officer had been.

  “Didn’t even offer you a ride back into town?” asked Sam, opening the truck’s passenger door for them. “That’s Gatesweed for ya. Where you people from? Not around here, I bet.”

  Eddie thought the guy knew more than he was saying. He climbed into the truck and perched uncomfortably across his mother’s and father’s laps. Sam got behind the wheel. He turned the key, and the engine growled to life.

  “We came down from Heaverhill,” said Eddie’s father. “Upstate New York. A few hours north.”

  “We’re supposed to be moving in today,” said Eddie’s mother.

  “Wait one wicked second. …” Sam turned his entire body to look at her. “You’re moving into Gatesweed?”

  “Well, yeah,” said Mom, clutching her pocketbook to her chest. “Why?”

  Sam sniffed and shook his head. “Nothing. It’s just that when it comes to this town, most people move out, not in. My parents left when I was still in high school. I live across the Rhodes River Bridge, east of here.”

  “Parts of the town seem a little … deserted, sure,” said Mom, “but overall, it’s such a pretty place. Don’t you think?”

  Sam pulled onto the road. “Yeah. Right. Pretty.” He turned on the radio. Heavy metal music rattled the broken speakers in the dashboard—the singer was screaming something about blood. “So it was Gatesweed’s abundant beauty that lured you?” he asked with a smirk.

  Out the window, Eddie watched as they passed a crooked iron fence on the left side of the road. Dead vines were wrapped around the rusty spikes, as if the woods were trying to drag the fence down into the dirt.

  “Actually,” said Dad, “that’s sort of exactly right. … We drove out a few months ago for an antiques fair just north of the Black Hood Mountains, and my wife fell in love with the area. I’m an antiques dealer. … We thought Gatesweed might be a great spot for collecting new pieces. We started looking and almost immediately found a deal on a beautiful house with a big barn in the backyard. … Figured, what the heck? Perfect spot to store antiques. Perfect town for my wife to start writing again.”

  “You’re a writer?” Sam asked Eddie’s mother.

  “Sort of. I haven’t published anything yet,” she said. “Speaking of writers, why don’t you ask about that house, Edgar?” Eddie could tell she was trying to change the subject. He blushed, embarrassed that she was drawing attention to him. “My son wanted to know if the house back there belongs to that author … Nathaniel Olmstead?”

  Sam was silent fo
r almost five seconds. Finally, he answered. “Yeah, sure. It belongs to him …,” he said, before correcting himself, “or it belonged to him.”

  “Did you know him?” asked Dad.

  “Not really. I saw him around every now and then when I was a kid,” said Sam. “Quiet guy. If anyone knows what happened to him, they ain’t talking. A mystery. Like something out of one of his books.” Sam glanced at Eddie. “I read them all when I was your age. What are you, twelve?”

  Eddie nodded.

  “Yeah,” Sam continued, “me and my friends were obsessed. Every time a new book came out, we would go around town looking for the places that Nathaniel Olmstead wrote about. Freak each other out and stuff.”

  “Wait,” said Eddie, sitting up straight, “he wrote about places in Gatesweed?”

  “Hell, yeah. The Devil’s Tree on Mansion Street. The old church rectory. The wood mill bridge. The statue of Dexter August in the town green. They’re all right here. His inspiration, they say. Me and my friends would hang out in these places at night. The cops used to bust us up. Said we were disturbing the peace … having too much fun. But that was before my friend Jeremy …” He turned the wheel sharply as the road curved to the right. He didn’t finish his sentence.

  “Before your friend Jeremy what?” asked Eddie.

  The driver sucked his teeth. “You’re an Olmstead fan. You must’ve heard the stories.”

  “What stories?” said Mom.

  Sam chuckled, but he did not sound amused. “The Olmstead Curse …” Olmstead Curse?

  Eddie suspected that the words were supposed to scare him, but for some reason, he felt intrigued. He’d just learned that he was moving into the town where his favorite author had written all of his favorite books—and now this guy was talking about curses? A strange, nervous warmth was growing in his stomach. The way the weird old policeman had driven off and left them stranded suddenly seemed to make sense—the man was frightened to get out of his car. Was that because of this curse? Eddie wanted to tell Sam about the animal his father had hit, that it had looked like a monster, but he had a feeling his parents didn’t want to hear any more about it.