The Sorrowstones, page 1
The Sorrowstones
Copyright © 2025 by Felix Blackwell
www.felixblackwell.com
All rights reserved in all media. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
The moral right of Felix Blackwell as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act of 1988.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locales, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental or fictionalized.
Art by Lorinda Tomko
www.lorindatomko.com
Published in the United States in 2025 through KDP.
Copyright © 2025 Felix Blackwell
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 9798269859514
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 66
About the Author
For Madame Sadre and her two-dollar roses
The thing I remember most about seventh grade was watching my best friend die. Noah was almost twelve, and had never suffered any health issues in all the years we’d known each other. In our second year of middle school, however, he got sick.
It was 1999. Our town was a bastion of civilization in the wild forests of Oregon, just big enough for a group of kids to get lost in. Britney and the Backstreet Boys poured from every stereo, and young people all over the state donned cargo pants with irresponsible amounts of zippers.
My squad was easy to spot. All of us had spiked hair, and three of the four of us had frosted tips, the universal marker of preteen badassery. We were dorks, and happily so, lost in the magical moments of unsupervised boyhood a generation before smartphones and social media.
One spring afternoon, Noah, Kevin, Squeeze, and I were sitting at a table beneath a big tree, where we’d spent countless lunchtimes bartering collectable cards, belching at girls, and bickering over who was the best on a skateboard. Noah rocked his new Blink-182 shirt, and I remember it vividly because of the cruel fate it suffered. In the middle of a rant about which Marvel superhero was the smartest, Noah suddenly went quiet and dropped his pizza slice right onto his pants. His eyes unfixed, and the color drained from his face as if he were being harvested by a vampire.
“Noah?” Kevin asked, poking him on the forehead with a chubby finger. “Anyone home?”
Noah took a slow, deep breath—then unleashed a tsunami of puke all over Kevin, who ran away cursing. Squeeze and I burst into hysterical laughter, but the good times ended when Noah began to convulse. He fell backward as more vomit rushed out of him, dousing his shirt and flooding across the table. Our food, our comics, and even our backpacks were swimming in a sea of bloody barf. Noah’s body went stiff, except his legs, which trembled violently.
“Noah!” I yelled, realizing this was an emergency. “Squeeze, go find a teacher!”
Squeeze was already across the courtyard shrieking for help before I could flip Noah onto his side. The lunch monitors rushed in and beheld the scene, which caused one of them to retch. Noah was able to sit up after a while, but he kept spitting blood onto the ground and crying. I felt like crying too, but I couldn’t. Instead, my anxiety had paralyzed me into a frigid stupor.
Noah’s mother skidded into the parking lot within minutes of receiving a call from the school nurse.
“What the hell are you feeding these kids, toxic waste?!” she barked at the principal while stabbing the air between them with her finger.
Squeeze and I watched Noah’s mom from the nurse’s office, mesmerized by her anger and the glimmer on our principal’s sweaty forehead. I don’t know why, but my brain conjured scenes of her using that finger to dig out his eyes and eat them. Over the years, that fantasy melded into my memories, and now I recall the squishing sounds of her chewing so vividly that I sometimes wonder if it really happened.
We watched the paramedics load our friend into an ambulance and speed off. Before they slammed the door on him, Noah’s horrified eyes met mine, and I wondered if I’d ever see him again.
That night, my mom poked her head into my bedroom while Kevin and Squeeze were over. She had a look of relief on her face.
“Boys,” she said lovingly, “Noah’s gonna be just fine. They think it was food poisoning. Get some rest, and I’ll take you to see him tomorrow.”
Kevin, Squeeze, and I lay on the floor in our sleeping bags, gazing up at the hundreds of glow-in-the-dark stars my dad and I had put on the ceiling a year before. I traced new constellations with my dog’s beloved laser pointer.
“Thank God,” said Squeeze, fretting with the rope bracelets he always wore. “I thought we’d become the three amigos.”
“I’m glad he’s okay,” Kevin replied, “but dead or alive, he owes me a new shirt. I want his Slipknot tee.”
“You’d have to lose about a thousand pounds to fit into Noah’s clothes,” Squeeze shot back. I tried to stifle a laugh.
“Shut up, Squeeze,” Kevin hissed, making a gesture like he was crushing someone’s heart. Squeeze and I cringed, recalling the day he’d earned his nickname. Back in sixth grade, Scotty had thought it’d be funny to lift Kelly Huckson’s skirt in front of the lunch line. She’d caught him in the act, grabbed his balls through his basketball shorts, and squeezed until his voice rose two octaves. That was the day I realized I had feelings for her.
“Guys,” I said, “if Noah got food poisoning, why aren’t we sick? We all had the same pizza today.”
“Iron guts,” Kevin said, slapping his big belly. “I feel fine.”
“Me too,” I said with a shrug. “Weird.”
“You’re always sick, Cole,” Squeeze added. “Give it a few hours. You’ll be in the hospital with Noah by morning.”
“Don’t get him worked up,” Kevin snapped. “Cole’s got that panic thing too. You’ll give him a heart attack.”
“Hospitals treat food poisoning and heart attacks, stupid,” Squeeze quipped.
Kevin whacked Squeeze in the head with his pillow. Squeeze’s bleached spikes reverted into a fuzzy mane.
“Come to think of it, I haven’t been sick in a while,” I replied.
“Sleep time, boys!” Mom bellowed from the hall. “Cole, don’t push it.”
“Yes, Mom,” I grumbled.
I got up and tossed the laser pointer into my desk drawer so the dog wouldn’t whine about it all night. As it fell into the clutter, the laser plinked against an object and made an unfamiliar sound. I reached inside and my hand fell upon a rough stone in the shape of a tortoise. It was a strange trinket I’d found last year and forgotten until now. As I drifted off to sleep, I suddenly remembered the last time I’d been sick.
As a little kid, I’d always had tummy trouble. The doctors could never figure out if I had a digestive disorder or just a nervous condition, but it seemed like I was sleeping next to a bucket at least once a month. My dad used to say I threw up more than most cats.
The last time I’d fallen ill was about five months ago, on Halloween. I remember feeling so terrible that day that I was sure I’d miss trick-or-treating. As I lay in bed watching South Park and brooding over my ruined evening, Noah came through the door with a devilish grin on his face.
“Boy, have I got a surprise for you,” he said, tossing an empty pillowcase at me. He dropped his backpack and started changing into a ninja costume, which matched the one draped over my desk chair.
“I don’t think I can go tonight,” I said, carefully releasing a nauseous burp.
“Get it together, man,” he replied, pulling a black mask over his dirty-blond hair. “You don’t wanna miss where we’re going.”
Over the next few minutes, Noah regaled me with a story told to him by Kevin, who
Fizzing with excitement for all the chocolatey possibilities, I convinced myself I was well enough to go, and made a miraculous recovery in under two hours. My mother argued with me for a bit but finally caved when my older sister Cassie promised to escort us with our German shepherd, Thor. I donned my costume, ready for battle, and we vanished into the night.
“Holy shit,” I said with a gasp as we arrived in the new neighborhood.
“Rich pricks,” Cassie added. “Unbelievable.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Noah said, throwing his arms wide, “I give you… The Accolades!”
He hadn’t exaggerated. These were the biggest houses I’d ever seen. Practically every one of them had a pool or a basketball court. One even had a go-kart track. Each house was adorned with spooky decorations, and scores of children zipped between them like bees in a flowerbed. Laughter and squeals filled the night, and every cool costume in existence was on display: pirates, ninjas, skeletons, and all manner of zombified pop culture icons.
“Let’s get to work,” Noah said, tightening his face mask and unsheathing his plastic katana.
“To battle!” I shouted, ignoring the burbling in my stomach and begging God to grant me a pass just this one night. Even if He decided to smite me with another wave of nausea, there were plenty of hedges to puke in.
It was a wholesome trick-or-treating affair, made all the more festive by an eerie blanket of fog. Noah, Cassie, Thor, and I worked each street like a crew of bandits, covering the entire neighborhood in under two hours. We made it home by ten o’clock, lugging pillowcases stuffed with sugary treasure.
Despite the news-driven hysteria at the time, I didn’t find any rat poison or needles in my haul that night. But I did find something else. While sitting on the floor of my bedroom with Noah, I fished around in my pillowcase for another Kit Kat bar, and my hand fell on something odd. I retrieved the object and turned it over in my fingers. It was a green tortoise statue about the size of a golf ball. The uneven shell sloped at different angles around its rim, and the beak curled up in the faintest of smiles. The eyes, mere black pits, seemed to gape in horror at something only the tortoise could see.
An alien feeling crept over me as I studied it. I imagined those eyes staring into oblivion, watching the turn of dark centuries, drinking in the light of cold stars as they wheeled through the sky. A tiny inscription circled the bottom of the shell, but I couldn’t make it out.
“The hell’s that?” Noah asked.
“Dunno,” I mumbled, snapping out of my reverie. “It was in my bag.”
“Chocolate turtle?”
“Nah, too heavy.”
Noah yanked the statue from my hand and studied it.
“That’s jade,” he said. “That big Buddha in my dad’s office is made of it.”
“But why would someone give it to me?” I asked.
“Maybe they thought you were too fat for the chocolate ones,” he replied. We laughed.
I set the tortoise statue in my desk drawer among my Beast Wars action figures and forgot about it. That night, we ate candy until we hallucinated. My stomach never once growled in protest.
Noah got out of the hospital two days after the incident at school, but he was never quite the same. Over the next few months, his hair thinned, his skin paled, and he began shedding weight from his already lanky frame. He lost his ability to eat the junk food we loved, and when he played outside with us, Noah would become exhausted within minutes. Squeeze started to make fun of him for being even more out of shape than Kevin, who could hardly walk up the five stairs at the school entrance without getting out of breath.
In stark contrast, I was feeling better all the time. I figured I was growing out of whatever digestive condition had plagued me throughout my childhood, because I no longer took sick days or slept on the floor of the bathroom. Kevin, Squeeze, and I ate all the pizza we could fit in our faces, but Noah could only watch and choke down the carrots and diced chicken his mom had prepared.
“Simple foods,” Noah would say, reciting what his doctors had told him. “Foods with one ingredient. They’re easier to break down, I guess.” The image of his gaunt body hidden under a blanket while he snacked on rabbit food filled me with pity.
Sadly, over the remainder of the year, our group began to exclude Noah from our adventures. He couldn’t find the strength to climb the tree at our hangout spot in the woods. He couldn’t play basketball with us at the courts in the park. He couldn’t even sleep over anymore, unless we all wanted to go to bed at seven o’clock. My best friend was withering away right before my eyes, and I had no idea how to help.
Then one day, Noah stopped showing up to class. The teacher told us he’d be finishing his schoolwork at home for the rest of the year.
“Lucky son of a bitch!” Kevin whined on the bus ride home.
“Not that lucky,” Squeeze replied. “I think he’s really sick, dude. But his mom probably lets him play video games all day. She’s cool as hell.”
“Mrs. Triana wants me to bring homework packets to him,” I said, pulling a thin stack of papers out of my backpack. “You guys wanna come with?”
“Nah,” Kevin said. “We’re going to the arcade with my dad. You should come.”
“I’ll try,” I said, zipping up my backpack as the bus rolled to my stop. “But you guys should visit soon. It would make Noah happy.”
“Tell him to quit faking!” Kevin yelled out the window as the bus pulled away.
I headed straight for Noah’s house on my way home, eager to check on him and catch him up on all the gossip around the schoolyard. Plus, I wanted to copy his homework.
Noah’s mother greeted me at the front door. The hopeless look on her face filled me with worry.
“Hi, Cole,” she said through taut lips. “Thanks so much for bringing Noah’s assignments home.”
“It’s no problem, Mrs. Schwartz,” I said, taken aback by her demeanor. When I handed over the homework packet, I got a terrible feeling that she didn’t intend to give it to him.
Noah’s mom led me up the stairs and down a darkened hallway to her son’s bedroom. The curtains were drawn in the house now, blocking out most of the light and giving the place a dreary ambience. I’d been in this house a thousand times, but on this occasion it felt like an eerie copy of itself, robbed of any warmth and filled with something dreadful.
The only light in Noah’s room came from the TV. A horror film was playing and it bathed the walls in a red glow. I watched as a pack of zombies overpowered a young woman and tore strips of flesh from her body to feast upon.
“Honey,” said Mrs. Schwartz, “I told you not to watch scary movies. Watch something funny. It’s better for you.”
Noah didn’t respond. His mother left me there in the room with him and closed the door softly behind her.
“Hey bro,” I said, approaching Noah’s bed. His floor was cleaner than I’d ever seen it. He hadn’t been splaying out his comics or organizing his Pokémon card collections at all. The only thing on the ground now was a bucket, which instantly brought to mind all the terrible nights I’d spent beside one just like it.
“Even zombies can eat,” Noah said in a gravelly voice. “Why can’t I?”
I glanced back at the TV, which now showed a closeup of a skinless, wide-eyed ghoul munching on a snarl of intestine.
“What about soup?” I asked, trying to force an optimistic tone. “I’ll ask your mom to make us some chicken noodle soup. That sounds really good, actually.”
“I’d rather not,” Noah said. He pulled the cord on the lamp next to him and lit up the room.
I gasped at his appearance.
Noah had deteriorated since I’d last seen him. In a matter of days, his cheeks had sunken to pits and his skin had turned a bluish-gray color. Little sores dotted his neck and arms. His eyes looked right through me, far beyond the room, as if into the next world.
“Jesus,” I whispered. I remembered my grandfather saying he could sense death just before something terrible happened in the war, and I felt that way now looking upon my friend. He didn’t have long.
