The Strangers

by Jacqueline West

  A breath of air, colder than the autumn winds outside, floated up from the darkness. The group clustered in the doorway. The ancient wooden steps below them seemed to dwindle down into nothing, erased by blackness before they could reach the floor.

  Without another word, Delora plunged down the steps. In a moment, she too had vanished into the dark.

  “Be careful, my love!” Doctor Widdecombe called, setting a tentative toe on the first step. The wood groaned loudly. “These stairs do not look structurally sound!”

  “There’s a light at the bottom of the steps!” called Olive at the same time.

  But both of their words were lost in the rising wave of Delora’s scream.

  11

  EVERYONE GALLOPED DOWN the basement stairs.

  “Delora, darling!” cried Doctor Widdecombe, taking the lead. He teetered heroically down the squealing steps. “Are you all right? Speak to me!”

  “We’re coming, Aunt Delora!” Walter rumbled from the back of the crowd.

  “What on earth?” puffed Mrs. Dewey, who was squished in the middle between Olive and Rutherford.

  The basement was too dark to see Delora, or whatever it was that had made her scream. Standing on her toes, Olive grabbed the chain of the hanging lightbulb. Its yellow glow pushed the blackness into the corners, uncovering the cobwebbed rafters, the dusty, junk-strewn shelves, and the cold, uneven stone walls. Patches of flaking plaster clung here and there. Mortar crumbled between the stones like very old cheese in a very old sandwich.

  In one corner where the darkness never quite disappeared, a pair of bright green eyes glittered, and Olive knew that Leopold was in his station atop the trapdoor. Olive also knew that the trapdoor led to a dirt-walled tunnel, which wound its way to the hidden stone room where Aldous had concocted his paints. Aldous’s ingredients—bony, oily, powdery, and sometimes many-legged—still waited there in rows of foggy glass jars. Olive knew firsthand that trying to create and use these paints could be disastrous. The thought of Doctor Widdecombe or Delora or even Mrs. Dewey finding out about them made Olive’s heart sink like a sponge soaked in ice water.

  But, fortunately, it wasn’t the trapdoor that had caught Delora’s attention.

  Delora stood in a corner near the washing machine, swaying slowly back and forth.

  “Delora, my precious rose, what is it?” Doctor Widdecombe asked—although Olive noticed that he stopped several steps away from where his rose was currently planted.

  “It is here,” Delora whispered. “I could feel it, branching up through the entire house.” She spread her hands toward the stone wall. “The cold! The power! The root of the darkness!”

  Doctor Widdecombe edged toward the wall. His knees creaked as he bent down. “‘Aillil McMartin. Angus McMartin, 1793.’” He straightened up again so suddenly that everyone else jumped. “Of course!” he announced. “These are gravestones! Argyle and Athdar and Alastair McMartin—it must be the entire McMartin line!”

  “Yes,” said Olive. “I know.”

  Doctor Widdecombe wheeled around. “You know?” he repeated.

  “Back in Scotland, when their neighbors destroyed the McMartin home, Aldous saved all the bits of the family plot that hadn’t been wrecked,” she said, repeating the story that the cats had once told her, what already felt like a century ago. “So he took the gravestones and . . . everything that had been under them. And then he brought them here.”

  “Graves?” Walter’s deep voice wobbled. “Doesn’t that—mmm—doesn’t that bother you? Knowing they’re down here? In your house?”

  Olive tried to recall how she’d felt when she first discovered the gravestones, in the dim basement, under the watchful eye of a huge black cat. It hadn’t been pleasant, she was sure. But over time the gravestones had become just one more strange thing in a house full of strange things. At least the gravestones had never climbed down from the walls and tried to drown her.

  “They’re only gravestones,” she said, sounding braver than she felt. “They can’t do anything.”

  “I’m afraid that you are wrong,” said Doctor Widdecombe. “Come closer, Olive. Look.”

  Olive edged across the basement toward Doctor Widdecombe. She bent over beside him, bringing her own face nearer to the crumbling stone wall.

  “Do you see what is happening here?” Doctor Widdecombe asked.

  Olive squinted. “I guess that Athdar one looks a little bit crumblier than before. But that might be because the dryer wobbles and hits it sometimes.”

  “Not their texture,” said Doctor Widdecombe. “Their color.”

  Olive squinted at the wall again. Where the gravestones had once been a dirty grayish brown, now they were more of a brownish gray. Or a blackish gray. Or just black.

  “They are quite a different color from the rest of the stones, wouldn’t you agree?” prompted Doctor Widdecombe.

  Olive nodded, frowning. Over her shoulder, she glanced at the green eyes gleaming from the darkness.

  “Next, note the temperature,” Doctor Widdecombe went on, as though they were examining a specimen in a laboratory. “It’s rather unsettlingly low.”

  “The walls are always cold,” said Olive.

  “This cold?” Doctor Widdecombe took her gently by the wrist and pressed her palm to Angus McMartin’s headstone.

  The shock was so immediate and so strong that at first Olive couldn’t tell if her skin was freezing or burning. She jerked her arm away. A print of her hand, as clear as if her palm had been coated in paint, smoked against the surface of the stone, a deeper black against the dark gray. It faded swiftly away again.

  “This is what the McMartins want back,” Doctor Widdecombe said authoritatively. He turned to look at the others, his voice ringing through the stone room. “A constant source of power. A link straight through the past, to the magic of each ancestor, the identities preserved to feed and fuel all the heirs to come. I have heard of this before, in other magical families—but never have I seen such a large or perfect collection.”

  “Why is it changing now?” Olive asked, holding her still-prickling hand against her side.

  “Imagine a reservoir,” said Doctor Widdecombe, shaping his meaty hands into a bowl. “Over time, the pool fills with rain, rising higher and higher. But no one uses the water inside. At last the water grows so high, its mass so huge, that it overflows—or it seeps through the walls around it, weakening and rotting everything that it can reach.” Slowly, Doctor Widdecombe spread his fingers. The bowl disintegrated.

  Horatio’s words—The McMartins are seeking someone to train. Someone to take on this house—floated back through Olive’s mind. “The house is looking for an heir,” she said softly. “It needs someone to use its power.”

  Doctor Widdecombe gave an admiring nod. “Precisely,” he said. “And it is growing stronger with each passing moment.”

  Delora lunged across the room. “Olive, you must get out of here!” she cried, grabbing Olive by both shoulders. “That it hasn’t corrupted you already is astonishing! The McMartins will never leave you in peace,” she breathed, her silvery eyes staring straight into Olive’s. “Not as long as you remain in this house!”

  Once more, Olive glanced over her shoulder. The green eyes stared steadily from their corner.

  The cats needed her. She couldn’t leave them to face the McMartins alone, not when the danger was Olive’s own fault. And Morton, and all of the people inside Elsewhere . . .

  “But I can’t leave,” she told everyone. “I can’t.”

  Doctor Widdecombe stepped forward. “Olive, your safety is at greater risk with every second you stay here.”

  “But I don’t—”

  “You must get away from this place!” Delora shrieked, her hands tightening around Olive’s arms until Olive winced. “Get away! Leave this house!”

  A black st
reak shot through the gloom and planted itself before Olive’s feet.

  “I will ask you to remove your hands from Miss Olive, madam,” Leopold boomed, making himself so rigid that the tips of his ears reached well above Olive’s knees.

  Delora blinked as if she’d just woken from a daydream. Her grip slid weakly from Olive’s arms.

  Leopold remained in place, glaring up at Delora.

  “Leopold,” Olive asked, “didn’t you notice that the gravestones were changing?”

  Leopold’s eyes flicked warily around the room. “That is classified information, miss.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “And I suspect that we are not alone.”

  “It’s all right,” said Olive. “Please tell us.”

  Leopold’s chest inflated still further. He raised his chin. “Very well, miss. It is correct that the stones have altered. Observation, rather than action, has been our chosen course.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Why would we tell you?” Leopold asked, looking surprised. “There is nothing to be done. The stones have changed many times over the years. They’ve altered very frequently over the course of the past few months, as Annabelle, and Aldous . . . and you,” Leopold added, under his breath, “have used the house’s powers.”

  “What about lately? Have they gotten better?”

  “Yes. Better,” Leopold said. “And then worse again. And then . . .”

  “And then what?”

  Leopold blinked. “Even worse.”

  “And so the guard on the wall watches the water rise and does nothing,” said Doctor Widdecombe. “It rises so very slowly, after all—until, very slowly, it rises over the wall, and floods the entire town.”

  Leopold’s chest rose until it bumped into his chin. “I don’t believe you are a member of this brigade, sir,” he said tightly.

  Doctor Widdecombe turned to Olive. “Under these circumstances, it would be neither wise nor kind of us to allow you to remain here until the danger is removed.”

  “Removed?” Rutherford piped up. “Are you suggesting extricating the gravestones from the foundation? Because I think that might seriously damage the house’s structural—”

  “No,” Delora cut him off. Her mirror-like eyes traveled up to Doctor Widdecombe’s face, then glided through the darkness to land on Mrs. Dewey. “But there are ways.”

  “What ways?” asked Olive.

  Delora’s mouth opened, but it was Mrs. Dewey’s voice that spoke next.

  “Absolutely not.” Her tone was sharp enough to slice bread. She stepped into the center of the chilly room, folding her arms across her chest. “We will not do anything so risky or reprehensible. It goes against everything we stand for.”

  Delora raised her hands warningly. “You ignore my warning at your own peril, Lydia.”

  “I think I’ll take my chances, Debbie.”

  Delora jerked back as though Mrs. Dewey had yanked a hair out of her nose.

  “That’s right,” Mrs. Dewey went on. “I remember when you were still just Deborah Schepkey from Cleveland.”

  “Cleveland?” Doctor Widdecombe’s eyebrows rose. “You told me that you were raised in the Northeast by a band of traveling fortune-tellers.”

  “If you—any of you—feel so terribly threatened by what might be contained in this house,” Mrs. Dewey resumed, before Delora could get her gaping mouth to work, “then why don’t you leave it?”

  “But—” Olive interrupted. “What about what Delora said? Why—”

  “Lydia is right, my black dove,” said Doctor Widdecombe, putting his hand gently on Delora’s arm. He didn’t seem to hear Olive at all. “It would behoove us all to calm ourselves and collect our thoughts. This sort of arguing is unworthy of us. We shall depart.” He ushered his wife toward the staircase. “Walter?”

  “I think—I think I’ll stay here,” said Walter. His deep voice echoed against the stones. “For a little while.”

  Doctor Widdecombe shook his head. “To each his own,” he said, as though Walter had just ordered oatmeal at an ice cream parlor. He and Delora creaked up the steps into the daylight.

  “May I go with them, Grandma?” Rutherford asked, darting after. “Not because I’m afraid of this house,” he added, “but because I’d like to ask Doctor Widdecombe some questions about protective charms.”

  “You may,” said Mrs. Dewey.

  Rutherford scampered up the stairs.

  Mrs. Dewey let out a breath. She looked from Walter to Olive, her mouth forming a tiny smile. “Now,” she said, “why don’t you two join me for a little lunch?”

  • • •

  In the kitchen of the old stone house, grayish daylight wound its way through the vine-covered windows. Patches of light gleamed on the worn wooden table and glittered in the cups of Mrs. Dewey’s steaming tea. Olive stirred several sugar cubes into hers. Walter sipped his tentatively, his long, knobby fingers forming a complete loop around the cup.

  “Is—mmm—is there Matchstick Mallow in this?” he asked.

  Mrs. Dewey’s little pink smile widened. “Very good,” she said. “You must know your infusions.”

  Walter shook his head. “No,” he said. “No. I don’t. I just—I just read a lot.”

  Olive took a drink of her tea. She thought she could feel her heart beating a bit more solidly, the slump of her spine starting to straighten. It could have used a few more sugar cubes, but the tea was making her feel a bit braver, anyway.

  “Mrs. Dewey?” she asked, reaching for another slice of Mrs. Dewey’s frosted pound cake.

  “Yes, Olive?”

  “The thing that Delora said—about removing the root of the power?”

  Mrs. Dewey’s face tightened. “Yes?”

  “Why shouldn’t we try it?”

  “Because, Olive, that sort of magic is precisely the things that the S.M.U.D.S. hopes to stamp out. It’s dark, dangerous, nasty stuff. And it has the potential to go dangerously, nastily wrong.”

  “But what if it went right?” Olive persisted. “We might be able to get rid of Annabelle and Aldous and get my parents back all at the same time!”

  Mrs. Dewey picked up a crumb that had landed near Olive’s elbow. “Just because it takes time and skill to bake a cake, should we give up on baking cakes completely?” Mrs. Dewey asked. “Should we eat raw eggs and spoonfuls of flour and sugar instead? Should we just put birthday candles in a stick of butter?”

  “. . . No,” said Olive, biting into her third slice and thinking of how sad a world without cakes would be.

  “The same things are needed here,” said Mrs. Dewey. “Time and skill.”

  “Okay.” Olive took a gulp of tea. “Then what if we just called Annabelle here, right now, and offered her whatever she wants in exchange for my parents?”

  Mrs. Dewey looked at Olive sharply. She tugged the teacup out of Olive’s hands. “If we wait for Annabelle to turn up on her own, we’ll have the upper hand. If we seem desperate, it will show her how much power she has.”

  Olive thumped her heels impatiently against the legs of her chair. “So what do we do next?”

  “Well,” said Mrs. Dewey, setting down her own teacup with a delicate click, “Byron and Delora and I will continue our work together—once I make peace with Delora, that is. She really is a gifted messenger, even if she is a flake.” Her eyes shot to the other side of the table. “Don’t tell your aunt I said that, Walter.”

  Walter hid a grin behind his steaming teacup.

  “We will try to find your parents without confronting Annabelle. If she feels threatened, it’s more likely that she’ll do something . . . permanent.” Mrs. Dewey stirred her tea, looking down.

  “But what about me?” Olive insisted. “What can I do?”

  “You can go to school,” said Mrs. Dewey.

  Olive�
��s jaw nearly hit the table. “School?”

  “Tomorrow is the start of a new school week. Unless we want teachers calling and truancy officers turning up at the front door, you will have to go to school and behave as normally as possible. I’ll call the university and explain that your parents have come down with a nasty flu, and they may not be back for several days.” Mrs. Dewey leaned closer to Olive, her soft, round face eclipsing the rest of the room. “But they will be back, Olive,” she said softly. “They’ll be home, safe and sound, before you know it. And, until they are,” Mrs. Dewey went on, sitting back in her chair again, “if you’re sure you want to stay in this house, I insist that you have someone stay here with you. A grown-up, human someone,” she added, before Olive could argue. “Whomever you choose will be your guest, Olive. This is still your home.” She gave Olive’s hand a powdery pat. “Personally, I would be glad to stay with you.”

  Olive looked into Mrs. Dewey’s crinkly eyes. They were warm and familiar and kind—and still, Horatio’s words about the house wanting an heir seemed to taint them with something colder. As good as Doctor Widdecombe or Delora or even Mrs. Dewey and Rutherford might be, couldn’t they be corrupted? If the house had managed to turn Olive against her own best friends—at least for a little while—what might it do to someone who could actually use its power? The only guest who could be trusted would be someone like Olive herself, who didn’t have any natural magical talent. Someone like—

  “Walter,” said Olive. “Just Walter can stay.”

  Walter gave a little start. The tea sloshed in his cup. “Me?” He blinked at Olive, his eyes eager and even wider than usual. “Really?” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he forced his voice back to a lower pitch. “I mean—thank you, Olive. I want to help in any way I can.”

  Olive gave Walter a nod. Then she glanced at Mrs. Dewey, who was clearing the lunch things, her face set in a pleasant little smile. Nobody was going to take this house away from her. Not an enemy. Not a friend. No one.