The Stonemason’s Block

In the autumn of my tenth year, my family moved into a sprawling, drafty house at the edge of a town that seemed to be slowly sinking into the surrounding marshland. My room was in the attic, a converted space with slanted ceilings and a single dormer window that looked out onto the skeletal branches of a dying oak. The previous owner had been a stonemason, and the room still held a large, rectangular block of granite in the corner, draped with a dusty canvas cloth. My parents thought it was a charming quirk, a piece of the house’s history. I thought it looked like a tombstone.

Nights were the worst. The house creaked and groaned like a ship at sea, and the marsh air seeped through the window frames, carrying the smell of decay. I had a small lamp on my nightstand, and its warm glow cast long, dancing shadows across the slanted ceiling. It was on the third night that I first noticed it. I had been reading a comic book, and as I set it down and tiredly blinked, I saw a flicker of movement near the granite block. Probably a mouse, I told myself, or a trick of the light. I turned off the lamp and tried to sleep, but my eyes kept darting to that corner.

Over the next few nights, the movement became more distinct. It wasn’t just a blur; it was a deliberate, jerky motion, as if something was playing a game of peek-a-boo behind the canvas-covered stone. I would lie in bed, my heart thudding, and stare at the block. When I looked directly at it, the motion would cease. But if I looked away and then quickly back, I’d catch a glimpse of a thin, greyish shape that seemed to be shrinking into the shadow behind the stone. It was no bigger than a cat, but it moved with a disjointed, puppet-like gait that made my skin crawl.

I tried telling my parents, but they dismissed it as an overactive imagination, fueled by the old house and the spooky marsh. My father even lifted the canvas cover to show me the block was just a harmless piece of granite, pitted and grey. But as he replaced the cover, I saw it: a small, fresh-looking chip in the stone’s edge, as if something had recently struck it. My father didn’t notice. I went to bed that night with a sick, cold feeling in my stomach.

The next night, I decided to stay awake. I propped myself up in bed, facing the block, and watched with all my might. The moon was full, and the room was bathed in pale, silver light. For hours, nothing happened. My eyes grew heavy, and I had to fight to keep them open. Just as I was about to succumb, I saw a slight tremble in the canvas. It was so subtle, I almost missed it. Then the canvas bulged outward, and a hand pressed against it from the inside. A small, grey, stone-like hand. I froze; I couldn’t even breathe. The hand withdrew, and then the canvas slid aside, just enough to reveal a pale, pebbled face with two hollow, dark eyes staring directly at me.

Time seemed to stop. The creature’s eyes were like bottomless pits, and I felt a horrible pull, as if my own soul was being drawn into them. It opened its mouth, and a dry, rasping sound escaped, like stones grinding together. I wanted to scream, but my voice was trapped in my throat. The creature then held up its hand, and I saw tiny, chiseled shapes in its palm – it was chipping away at the floorboards, creating a fine dust. And in that dust, I recognized a pattern: the shape of a name. My name.

Terror gave me strength. I threw off my covers and bolted for the door, but it was locked. I fumbled with the knob, sobbing, but it wouldn’t budge. I turned around, and the creature had now fully stepped out from behind the block. It was about three feet tall, with a hunched back, and its skin was like granite. It walked toward me with a slow, uneven gait, each step leaving a faint scratch mark on the wooden floor. I pressed my back against the door, shaking violently.

It stopped in front of me and tilted its head, studying me with those void-like eyes. Then it began to tremble, and I watched in horror as its stone body started to crumble and shift. It grew taller, its features stretching and distorting until it was no longer a creature, but a mirror image of me. My face, my clothes, my terrified expression. It smiled with my own lips, a cold, dead smile, and spoke in a voice that was a perfect replica of mine, but with a horrid, gravelly undertone.

‘Time to go to sleep,’ it said. The words were the same ones my mother said to me each night, but coming from its mouth, they sounded like a curse. I felt a sudden, overwhelming exhaustion, and my legs gave way. I collapsed onto the floor, my vision swimming. The last thing I saw was the creature kneeling beside me, its hand reaching toward my face.

I woke up in my bed the next morning, and the world seemed perfectly normal. My mother called me for breakfast. I got up, but as I passed the granite block, I noticed something new. The canvas cover was undisturbed, but on the floor beside it, there was a small pile of grey dust. And at the foot of my bed, where I had lain cold and lifeless, there was a single, finger-sized groove in the wooden floorboard, as if something had carved into it while I slept. When I leaned closer, I could make out the beginnings of a name. Not mine, but the name of a boy who lived down the street. And I smiled, because I knew that I would have a new friend to play with soon.