“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 for 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.
Eddie shook his head.
“Oh, come on!” said Sam.
“No. I haven’t heard of it,” said Eddie.
“A curse?” said Eddie’s father. “You can’t be serious.”
Sam didn’t answer.
“What kind of curse is it?” Eddie’s mother tried.
“I think I’ve already done enough damage to Gatesweed’s reputation for one afternoon,” said Sam. “I do sort of depend on this town for business. Can’t go scaring you off, especially now that you live here. If you want to know more, you can look it up for yourself.”
“You can’t say something like that and then just leave it,” said Eddie’s mother, clutching her pocketbook even closer.
The truck came around a bend in the road. Several sharp-peaked roofs bit through the treetops ahead. Then, suddenly, the whole town appeared, cupped in the small circular valley beyond the lip of the hill.
“I’d offer to check under your bed tonight for ya,” said Sam, turning up the radio, “but I don’t want to intrude.” The music shrieked and the windows of the small cab trembled. “Don’t you just love this song?”
Sam took a right onto Heights Road. The truck rose up the steep hill, shuddering as it tried to shift gears. Eddie couldn’t believe they were almost home. So much was happening so quickly.
Every house they passed might be the one where they would stop. Strange how so many of them looked empty. Their windows were dark, the glass broken. Most of the large front lawns were unkempt and overgrown, as if no one had touched them in years. As unbelievable as it seemed, maybe the driver had been right. Maybe everyone really had left Gatesweed.
Were curses real? Eddie wondered.
The long truck he had last seen in Heaverhill was parked in front of a quaint gray house at the top of the road. When the tow truck stopped, his father opened the door, and Eddie leapt from the cab onto the curb. He started to run up the driveway. He was nearly at the garage when he heard his father call, “Edgar!”
Eddie turned around and called back, “I need to find my books!”
3
Ronald could see his reflection on the lake’s surface. The cold air bit through his thin jacket. Time was running out. He looked at the crumpled paper. It was difficult for him to read the writing. The moon had almost sunk beneath the horizon, and the light was fading. He needed to solve the riddle before the caretaker realized he’d torn the page from the mysterious book.
Ronald squinted to make out the position of the cross marks on the paper. He knew that the first X was the mansion itself, and he was pretty sure that the second X represented the statue of the girl in the clearing. But what location did the star represent? There were certainly plenty of stars reflected in the water, but which one held the answer to the question at the top of the page?
As he looked at the other shore, trying to notice another clue, the toes of his sneakers slipped forward and touched the wet, muddy edge of the lake, sending out tiny ripples. He immediately leapt backward. His grandfather had warned him—no matter what, do not touch the water.
Reflected in the water, some of the stars had already changed color, from white to red. As he watched, they all turned, then began to move. In an instant, they divided into hundreds of pairs of red eyes that watched him from under the lake’s surface.
Ronald took a step backward and almost tripped as he turned to run. He made it to the woods before he heard the splashing.