The Stone Child by Dan Poblocki Page A

stop selling his books in her store—no matter how many times people paint nasty things on her front porch … or how many people believe his monsters are real.”
    The pair of red-rimmed yellow eyes blinked in Eddie’s memory. He remembered the articles he’d read on the Internet about the curse. “People
really
think his monsters are real?” he said, clutching his book bag even tighter.
    “Yeah,” said Harris. “Some people do. Like the animals people say they’ve seen in these woods. I’ve never seem them, but I’ve heard people say they look like the ones Nathaniel writes about. Everything that happens in this town gets blamed on him—and he’s not even here anymore. People stopped going to the movie theater on Main Street because of the things they said lived behind the screen. And the mills closed down after the owners kept finding huge gouges in their machinery. People said they looked like bite marks. And, of course, a small group of people blamed the New Mill Bridge collapse on Nathaniel’s trolls. After everything else, that one was pretty much inevitable. Lots of people left town when the mills closed. That sort of destroyed Gatesweed, so it makes sense that people need someone to blame, but still …”
    “What about the symbol on the statue?” said Eddie. “Do you know what that means? I read something about the Greekletter pi, which looks almost exactly like the symbol carved here.” He pointed at the girl.
    “Right … from math class,” said Harris. “Maybe. We could look into it, but I’m not very good at that subject. And I don’t know a thing about Greek. What I do know is that the book you found is important. I was so happy when I saw you in school today … that you weren’t just an Olmstead hunter, chased away by old Wally the Weasel. That’s what my mom calls him,” said Harris, with a smirk. “I was thinking about your book all night. The code
has
to mean something. The symbol on the statue is the connection. I brought you here so that you’d understand. … The secret of the book in your bag isn’t just about a code. It’s about this place, this statue. It might be about Nathaniel Olmstead himself. Who knows … maybe if we solve it, we’ll find out what really happened to him. Maybe we can clear his name. Then people will leave my mom alone.”
    “Yeah, totally!” said Eddie. “Nathaniel Olmstead would also probably give us his autograph or something … if he’s, you know … still alive.” As he said the words, he felt foolish, disrespectful—especially in this place, so close to where the man had lived. He wandered to the opposite side of the circle. “So you
do
think the book might have belonged to Nathaniel Olmstead?”
    The land sloped down quickly. At the bottom where it leveled out, the hill was met by a lake, about thirty feet across. The trees on the other shore concealed a steep, rocky hillsidethat jutted high above the water. Through the thick foliage, the tree roots were visible clinging, almost clutching, at the cliffside. Near the water’s edge, several long, leafy branches hung down from the trees and dangled just above the calm surface, tickling their own reflections with stringy shadows.
    “If not, at least it belonged to someone who knows about the Nameless Woods, the Nameless Lake,” said Harris, following Eddie across the clearing to the top of the slope, “and the symbol on the statue.”
    “Which could be anyone in town,” said Eddie. “Right?” He picked up a pebble from the edge of the clearing before heading down the hill.
    “Yeah,” said Harris, “but no matter who it belonged to in the past, now it’s up to us to figure it out.”
    Eddie nodded, excited. Was Harris suggesting they work together? That they become friends? “Yeah,” he said as they neared the edge of the lake. “It’s up to us.”
    “So how should we start?” said Harris.
    At the shore, Eddie tossed the pebble. It bounced across the sky’s reflection,