Compelled by curiosity, Eddie continued to read.

Beyond the stone children at the gate, inside the Garden, God had created the first man and woman. Throughout history, most people have understood these to be Adam and Eve, but according to The Myth of the Stone Children, Eve was not the first woman. Before Eve ever existed, Adam had a wife named Lilith. Unlike Eve, Lilith did not come from a piece of his rib. Lilith was Adam’s other half, his equal. She and Adam lived together in Eden for quite some time. Like every married couple, they fought. One day, they fought so terribly that God came and asked them what was wrong. In haste, Adam answered that Lilith had wronged him and should be punished. God took him at his word and banished Lilith from the Garden. He sent her far away, to a place where the Garden’s light did not reach.

Lilith’s only companions in her new home were the Exiled-the most vile, wretched creatures in their world. Lilith’s children were their children. These children became known as the Lilim; they too were Exiles.

According to the legend Nathaniel had found, after the infamous incident with the serpent and the tree of knowledge, God smashed Eden ’s wall into thousands of pieces and scattered them far across the globe. Where the pieces fell, the fabric of our world became weak. Sometimes the fabric was so thin, people could see through it into darker realms bordering our own. Having traveled to these places for inspiration, for advice, and for prayer, humans learned the sites of the fallen wall were sacred, but also dangerous. When glancing into other worlds, they never knew who might be glancing back. According to The Myth of the Stone Children, Lilith’s children were tired of living in darkness. Some wanted to live in the light of our world. Others only wanted to destroy it. The Lilim were unsatisfied looking through the veil. They wanted more. They wanted a door.

As he studied, Nathaniel learned that several hundred years ago, a scholar familiar with the mythology discovered a strange instrument, which he believed was the archangel’s key. The instrument was a necklace from which dangled a sharp silver pendant. From his studies, he concluded that this key could lead whoever possessed it to the places where the walls of Eden had tumbled. It was also the scholar’s opinion that this instrument, if used correctly, had the power to puncture a hole in the fabric between the worlds.

The lamp on Eddie’s bedside table flickered and dimmed. He dropped his pen with a shout. “What the heck?” Eddie whispered to himself, scrambling to the center of the mattress in case he was suddenly thrown into darkness. He turned and stared at the lamp for a few seconds. The light remained defiantly faint.

For a moment, he tried to convince his wild imagination that it was a perfectly normal occurrence, a power surge of some sort, but after the creepy experiences of the past few days, he understood quickly that it might be something less ordinary. It was not a pleasant thought.

He imagined a sharp-clawed hand, reaching up from the side of the bed, tugging on his quilt. “Stop it,” he whispered, smacking his forehead with the palm of his hand. He then called “Mom!” toward his closed bedroom door. He waited for several quiet seconds, but she did not answer. “Dad!” he tried, but he was met again only by the subtle creaking of the house as the breeze came up the hill.

Where are they? he thought. He looked at the clock, wondering if they might be asleep. It flashed twelve o’clock repeatedly. Maybe there had been an electrical shortage, after all.

Eddie realized he had no idea how long he’d been working. He pulled aside his curtain and peeked out the window. Gatesweed was quiet at the bottom of the hill-most of the lights in the few inhabited houses were out. It must be later than he thought.

As he was about to shut the curtain, Eddie noticed something strange happening in the center of town. It started with the park lights in the town green suddenly, collectively hushing out. Eddie watched as the streetlights on Center Street blinked out too. With each passing second, another circle of streetlights turned off. Then the buildings in between each concentric street seemed to lose power as well. Eddie had never seen anything like this before-during a normal power outage, all the electricity went out at once. But the darkness at the bottom of the hill seemed to be creeping toward him, like a disease.

The light on his bedside table dimmed even further, and Eddie groaned.

Unable to control himself, he leapt into the middle of his bedroom floor, clearing at least an arm’s length between where he landed and the dark space under his bed. Then he raced toward his bedroom door and yanked it open. The pitch-dark upstairs hallway stretched before him. Eddie paused and turned around. The thing with claws he imagined waiting for him underneath his mattress might still be there, but Eddie did not yet run. The darkness in the hallway seemed just as threatening.

As he stood in his doorway contemplating whether or not to peer under his bed, the light on his nightstand simply sputtered out. Darkness weighed upon the house like a musty quilt. Eddie’s throat felt like it was closing up, but he managed to call down the hallway for his parents. Again, they seemed not to hear him; he didn’t receive an answer. Eddie wondered if they were even in the house at all. Where else would they be at such a late hour?

Eddie began to feel claustrophobic. He could barely see-the hallway was more like a vague impression than the real thing. He stepped farther into the hallway, clutched at the cold glass doorknob, and swung the door shut.

Searching for the nearest light switch, he swiped at the wall. He found it, but when he flicked the switch, nothing happened. Eddie exhaled slowly, trying to compose himself. Next, he took a purposeful step toward his parents’ bedroom. Keeping his eyes straight forward, Eddie managed to make his way there. While terrified by the silence filling the house, he was also thankful that nothing was growling, whispering, or scratching from inside the walls-as so often happened in Nathaniel Olmstead’s books during moments like this.

He knocked at his parents’ bedroom door but didn’t wait for a response before turning the knob and swinging the door open. “Hello?” he said, stepping forward into the room. He heard the sheets rustling. Thank goodness, Eddie thought, scrambling quickly across the floor to his mother’s side of the bed. “It must be later than I thought,” he said quietly.

He reached out to touch her. He knew she wouldn’t mind him waking her-he’d done it before when he’d had a nightmare. He could feel her shoulder underneath the down comforter, but she didn’t respond, not even when he shook her slightly. “Mom!” he whispered.

Finally, she groaned in her sleep, then mumbled something. It sounded like, “What’s the matter?”

Eddie thought about how to respond without sounding paranoid. Any rational person could explain away his fears within seconds. The power’s gone out. Go back to bed. But Eddie didn’t want to go back to bed by himself-not after everything he’d learned from reading The Enigmatic Manuscript.

There was nearly a half-foot of space at the edge of the bed, so Eddie lay there, on top of the blanket. I’ll just stay until the power comes back on, he thought.

He smelled his mother’s fruity shampoo, but quickly the scent changed. It was no longer sweet, like his mother, but it was horrible-vaguely familiar, like something he’d experienced in a nightmare. He remembered the odor from Nathaniel Olmstead’s basement, when he and Harris had been reading The Wish of the Woman in Black. Where was it coming from? Eddie sat up, holding his nose. He listened to his parents’ breathing beside him. Sleeping soundly, they seemed not to notice the stench.