A short, thin man stood next to a pickup truck. “Sorry, man,” he said, “I just came off my shift. Didn’t expect to see a kid in a bathrobe in the middle of the road at this hour.” The man looked down and then shouted. “Aww, geez, what the heck did I run over?” In the middle of the road lay a black lump about a foot in diameter. It was wet and shiny in the truck’s headlights. “It’s not yours, is it? ”

Mesmerized by the lump in the road, Dylan shook his head.

“ Some kid is going to be really unhappy tomorrow morning. Poor little thing,” said the man, taking a step closer to examine the mess.

The man bent over as Dylan shouted, “Get away from it!” But it was too late. A slick humanlike hand shot out of the wet puddle and grabbed the man’s collar. Dylan watched the man’s face turn dark and oily, his skin seeming to melt away like wax. Not even his screaming could be heard over the sound of a woman’s fierce laughter, ringing across the Coxglenn Hills.

Harris tossed the book to the floor. His eyes grew wide and he stifled a small whimper. “I just thought of something…”

“What’s the matter?” asked Eddie, sitting up straight.

“The Woman,” Harris said, staring at the book.

Eddie’s stomach turned to ice. Of course! That’s why the title had sounded so familiar. The Wish of the Woman in Black.

“Eddie, do you think…?” He didn’t need to finish. Eddie had already started nodding.

It was her-the woman from the Gatesweed legend. The ghostly woman the townspeople said haunted the woods. The Watching Woman from the graffiti.

“You know what this means?” Harris continued.

Eddie nodded again. “Nathaniel did write a story about her, after all.” Looking around the basement, he felt the shadows pressing on him. He shuddered as he came to a terrible understanding. “Does this mean that the Woman in Black is real? Just like the gremlins and the dogs in the lake?”

Harris only nodded slightly, as if he’d come to the same conclusion. “Maybe people in town aren’t crazy. Maybe they really have seen her. Maybe she is watching?”

Eddie took a deep breath, then exhaled, trying to remain calm. He spoke slowly and evenly. “Maybe there’s a connection between the handwritten books we found here in the basement and the creatures we’ve seen in Gatesweed…”

“What kind of connection?” said Harris.

Eddie shook his head. “Maybe he knew that some of his monsters were real. Did he think the Woman was real too? Could he have buried this book under the stone because he thought her story was too scary?” Suddenly, Eddie had a terrible feeling. “If it was too scary for him” he whispered, “then what the heck are we doing here?”

Harris continued to stare intently at the book on the floor. “We’re doing what Nathaniel Olmstead would have wanted us to. Solving the mystery.” He picked up the book again and turned to where he’d left off, but when he flipped the next page to continue reading the story, he yelped.

“What’s wrong?” said Eddie, shining his flashlight at Harris.

Harris held his hand in front of his face to block the light, but he didn’t hesitate before showing Eddie what was on the next page.

P B Z D Y F R H V J W L U

A Q C O E T G S I X K N M

“No way,” said Eddie. Quickly, he picked up The Enigmatic Manuscript from the floor. Opening the cover, he compared the strange writing to the letters they’d just found in The Wish of the Woman in Black. After a few seconds, he said, “Why would Nathaniel Olmstead have written the code in this book too?”

“I’m not sure.” Harris pressed his lips together and flipped one more page. He looked distressed. He held up the book and showed Eddie. The rest of the pages were blank. “This is where it ends. The Wish of the Woman in Black is incomplete. He buried the book without finishing it.”

Eddie felt empty. “That’s everything he wrote?” he said. “But how does the story end? And why doesn’t he actually explain what the stupid code means?” He tossed The Enigmatic Manuscript on the floor next to the hole, where it landed with a soft whap. “We were so close to finding the key. What are we supposed to do now?”

Something on the other side of the room sneezed, and the boys froze. The noise had come from the doorway near the secret fireplace entry.

After a few seconds of silence, Eddie whispered, “H-hello?”

Harris seemed to come to his senses and suddenly whipped his flashlight toward the doorway. “Who’s there?” he said. Then he reached into his bag and pulled out his boomerang. If Eddie hadn’t been so terrified, he might have laughed at the image of the kangaroo shaking in Harris’s hand.

Harris’s light illuminated a shapeless dark figure. It scrambled backward against the wall near the ladder. Its clothes were black. Its white hands clutched at its pale face.

Was it the Woman in Black? Had she finally come after them, to turn them into piles of black ooze just like she had done to the characters in Nathaniel Olmstead’s book? But then Eddie quickly realized he was wrong. The Woman in Black would never cower from her victims.

“Would you please stop shining that in my eyes?” asked the figure.

“Who are you?” asked Harris. His fear seemed to drain away as he stood.

The figure brought her hands away from her face, squinting at the light, as Harris ignored her plea and continued to shine it at her. Finally, Eddie reached out and lowered Harris’s arm so that the beam of light fell on the floor at her feet. “It’s Maggie,” said Eddie. “Maggie Ringer.”

“You scared the hell out of us!” Harris screamed. His voice echoed through the underground chamber. He raised the flashlight and shone it at her face again. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same question,” said Maggie harshly. She stared at them defiantly, flaring her nostrils like a cornered animal. After a few seconds, she lowered her voice and said, “If you take that light out of my eyes, I’ll answer.”

Harris grunted and lowered the light again.

“I was coming home from school this afternoon,” said Maggie, “riding my bike up Black Ribbon, when I saw you guys ahead, crawling through the gap in the fence at the bottom of the Olmstead driveway. I just wanted to find out where you were going, so I followed you.”

“You shouldn’t have,” said Harris, carefully placing The Wish of the Woman in Black next to where The Enigmatic Manuscript lay on the floor. “This is a dangerous place.”

“Then why are you guys here?” asked Maggie, even though she looked like she already had an idea.

“It’s a secret,” Eddie said. He felt his face flush, imagining the looks he would get in school tomorrow if anyone found out what they had been doing here. “You can’t tell anyone.”

“How long have you been down here?” asked Harris. “That stench. Maybe it was…”

Maggie blinked at him. “What, me? Thanks, but no. I smelled it too, when I finally crept down the ladder a few minutes ago. I was listening to you guys from the mouth of the fireplace. For a while I could hear you really well, but then you started talking quieter. So I came closer.”

“Maybe the stench really was from-” Eddie was interrupted when Harris poked him in the arm.

“The Woman in Black?” said Maggie. She shook her head. “I already knew that you were up to something really strange, but this beats all. Codes? Monsters? And all these books you were talking about? Whatever you’re doing, it’s creeping me out.”

Harris said, “That’s why you shouldn’t have followed us.”

“I’m sorry!” she said angrily. “But what I saw in the library last night was totally crazy. I’d been doing my homework, and then you guys showed up with that… little monster following you. And then… those weird words you spoke, Eddie. You can’t expect me to just be like, Oh, okay, whatever… duh!”