Olive frowned. Annabelle’s hands had been cold. They had felt like the porcelain tea set on Annabelle’s table, smooth and empty and chilly. They felt like something that had never ever been alive. The girls who pushed Olive through their picture frame had cold hands too. But Morton’s hands were warm.
Her mind whirling, Olive stared up at the chandelier above the landing. One of her missing slippers was wedged between its branches.
12
OLIVE SAT ON her bed, still thinking about Morton.
Her reflection sat in the vanity mirror across from her, also thinking. Wondering if reflections worked the same way the paintings did, Olive put on the spectacles and walked into the vanity mirror. All she got was a bumped nose.
She wandered down to the library, where her father was frowning at the computer. “Hello, Olive,” he said, glancing up. “Is it dinnertime already?”
“It’s three thirty,” said Olive.
“Ah.” Mr. Dunwoody looked back down at the computer screen. “It’s been a long afternoon.”
Olive moseyed out onto the porch. The summer day was warm, with moist air making the ferns uncurl happily. The rusty chains on the porch swing creaked in the breeze. She glanced across the yard at Mrs. Nivens’s house. It looked very different from the house in the painting. The gate where Morton swung wasn’t there. The fence around the yard had disappeared. Instead of tinted gray by evening light, the house was white and gleaming. Neat lace curtains hung in its windows. It was funny, Olive thought. Even though nothing about the house itself had changed, it looked like a different place entirely.
Olive moved through the shade along the side of the house to the backyard, where the thick lilac clumps in the hedges were already turning from purple to brown, and shuffled her feet in the dewy grass. She could hear voices coming through the hedge—women’s voices.
Olive peeped through the lilac bushes and into Mrs. Nivens’s backyard. It was almost as different from the Dunwoodys’ as two yards could be. While the Dunwoodys’ was shady and overgrown with tangles of ivy and ferns, Mrs. Nivens’s yard had a few carefully tended trees, some tulips growing in strict rows, and grass that looked like it might have been combed and trimmed by hand. A TV commercial would have looked just right in Mrs. Nivens’s yard. A dinosaur would have looked just right in the Dunwoodys’.
Mrs. Nivens was sitting with Mrs. Dewey, who lived one house over, beneath the striped umbrella of her little white picnic table. When Olive approached, Mrs. Dewey was talking.
“Well, that’s not what Ned Hanniman told me. He’s got a perfect view from right across the street, and he said they haven’t brought a thing out of that house. It’s all still in there.”
Olive edged closer, leaning into the lilac bushes.
“I’m sure they just don’t know,” sighed Mrs. Nivens. “How would they? They don’t bother to talk with their neighbors. If I hadn’t gone over there and introduced myself, we wouldn’t even know their names.”
“Sad, isn’t it?” Mrs. Dewey shook her head.
“But you know, I personally wouldn’t want to live surrounded by all that old stuff. Dusty furniture and paintings and—”
Mrs. Nivens and Mrs. Dewey jumped. Olive had leaned forward just a smidge too far and toppled over into the lilacs.
“Olive?” Mrs. Nivens squinted toward the rustling hedge. “Is that you, dear?”
“Um . . .” said Olive.
“Why don’t you come over here and sit with us?” Mrs. Nivens turned back toward Mrs. Dewey. “Lydia, this is Olive Dunwoody, our new neighbor.”
Olive, sure that her face was bright pink, squished herself between the bushes and stumbled into the Nivenses’ yard.
Mrs. Nivens and Mrs. Dewey both smiled at her sweetly. Mrs. Dewey looked as if she had been made of round parts stacked on top of each other, like a snowman. Mrs. Nivens was thin and blond, and looked like she had been carved out of a stick of butter. Both of them looked like they would melt on a hot day.
“We were just talking about your house,” said Mrs. Dewey in a sugary voice.
“Yes.” Mrs. Nivens took over. “The McMartins were a very unusual family.” Mrs. Nivens said the word unusual the way most people said the word manure. “I’m sure the inside of the house is just as interesting as the outside.” Interesting sounded like manure too.
“Uh-huh,” said Olive. “It’s interesting.”
“That house used to be quite well-known around here,” said Mrs. Dewey. “The man who built it, Aldous McMartin, was a rather famous painter in his time.”
“Yes.” Mrs. Nivens took over again. “But they say he never sold a single painting. He wouldn’t let anyone buy them. That’s part of why he became famous—for being so odd. Now and then he’d let people into the house to see the paintings. But for some reason he wouldn’t sell a single one.”
Somewhere in the back of Olive’s mind, a few more puzzle pieces clicked together. If Aldous McMartin wouldn’t sell his paintings, it was probably because he knew that they were not ordinary paintings. Maybe he had made them that way himself. Olive’s thoughts spiraled like bubbles around a bathtub drain, faster and faster. Was Aldous McMartin the man Morton was talking about? And the girls in the meadow? And the three builders?
Olive was gazing into the distance with her mouth partly open when she realized that Mrs. Nivens and Mrs. Dewey were staring at her with concerned expressions.
Olive started. “I’m sorry. What?”
“I asked,” Mrs. Dewey said slowly, “are your parents doing a lot of redecorating? It’s such an old-fashioned place, with so many strange things that could be brought up-to-date . . .”
“No,” said Olive. “We kind of like it the way it is.” And as soon as she said it, she realized that it was true. Their house was much more interesting than any beige two-bedroom apartment. It was more interesting than anyplace Olive had ever been.
Mrs. Nivens and Mrs. Dewey exchanged significant looks.
“Well, I’d better be going.” Olive stood up. “Oh, by the way,” she said as casually as she could, “did either of you ever know a little boy named Morton who lived around here?”
Mrs. Dewey pursed her lips and frowned slightly. She looked like someone trying to remember the title of a song she hasn’t heard in years. But Mrs. Nivens had turned slightly pale—even paler than usual, that is. She sat stiffly, staring at Olive.
“I can’t remember anyone with that name, I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Dewey.
“No. I don’t think so,” said Mrs. Nivens. She gave Olive a tight little smile. “Perhaps a very long time ago.”
For a moment, Olive could barely breathe. Yes, a very long time ago.
Mrs. Nivens was still staring at her.
“Oh,” said Olive, stretching her mouth into what she hoped was a cheery smile. “Thanks anyway.” Then she hurried back through the lilac hedge into her own shady yard.
She stumbled into the garden, dazed and dizzy. There was something Mrs. Nivens wasn’t telling her. But she and Mrs. Dewey had certainly told her a lot of other things. If Aldous McMartin had done the paintings, maybe he had made them on purpose so that they could be used with the spectacles . . . But Leopold said that the spectacles had belonged to Ms. McMartin. And why would Mr. McMartin have made paintings that people could climb into anyway? Olive twiddled a strand of hair and gazed thoughtfully around the yard.
The backyard garden, a big plot between the crumbling shed and a gigantic oak tree, looked jumbled and overgrown, especially compared to Mrs. Nivens’s neat rows of tulips. Olive knelt down in the dirt, but she couldn’t tell which plants were weeds and which ones weren’t. There were all kinds of strange plants here: plants with purple velvet leaves; plants with tiny red flowers like droplets of blood; plants that looked like open, toothy mouths. She thought she recognized basil and parsley, and something else that looked like mint, but it could just as easily have been a nettle. Tentatively, Olive yanked up one weedy-looking sprout and received a red welt on
her thumb.
Sucking on the sore spot, Olive looked around the garden. Could it really have happened the way Morton said? On one night, a long time ago, did he wander out of the house next door and into this yard, perhaps to this very spot . . .
It was a steamy day, but Olive felt a sudden chill trickle down her back. Somebody was watching her.
She looked up. The three stories of the old house stared down at her. Somehow she had never noticed the third story at all. From the front of the old stone house, a person could see only two levels of windows: those on the ground floor, and those upstairs. But here, at the back, something was different. The house’s windows were made in all different shapes and sizes. There were large windows and small windows, dormer windows with panes of leaded glass, and windows with colorful beveled borders. Way up high, in a third story, there were tiny round windows that looked like something from an old sailing ship. And in one of those tiny round windows, there were two cats looking down at her.
Olive blinked. The cats sat still, as cats do when they know that they’ve been spotted. One of them sat mostly in shadow, and the only part of it Olive could see clearly was one bright green eye. The other was large and orange, and very familiar.
Her heart surged. Horatio!
Olive bolted up the steps onto the porch and through the back door. She ran along the hall, grabbed the newel post at the bottom of the stairs to keep from skidding into the parlor, and headed toward the second floor. If there were windows up there, it meant there had to be an attic. And if there was an attic, there had to be a staircase to the attic somewhere, and she was going to find it.
She raced through each upstairs room, searching for the staircase. No luck. She checked the rooms a second time, opening all the closet doors and even looking in drawers and wardrobes, like anyone who has read about Narnia would. She checked every ceiling, making sure there wasn’t some sort of trapdoor or ladder that she could pull down. She tried turning newel posts and pushing squares of wood paneling, hoping that there would be some secret lever or button. But there wasn’t.
Frustrated and confused, Olive thumped slowly back down the stairs. Whether Horatio was hiding from her, or whether the attic itself was keeping some sort of secret, she was being left out. Olive felt miffed. The miffed feeling grew into a feeling of annoyance, which grew into a feeling that was almost fury. This house was trying to exclude her. But instead of quietly skulking away, as Olive usually did when she was left out, she looked around for something to kick. She gave the wall that ran up the staircase a quick boot, and then felt immediately sorry. It wasn’t the wall’s fault. But before she had time to make amends, something strange caught her eye.
Halfway down the staircase, just to Olive’s right, hung a painting that she had noticed many times. It was an outdoor scene: a small, silver lake under a twilit sky. But this time, as Olive passed the painting, something within it sparkled, catching a beam of light. Olive put on the spectacles. The painted pine trees waved their branches cheerily. The silver water rippled onto the sand. A star or two peeked through the sky. And something small, bright, and gold glittered in the water just beyond the shore. Olive peered at it more closely. Yes, there was absolutely something there.
For a split second, Olive thought about the shadows that had chased her through the forest. She thought about Morton. She thought about Annabelle. And she thought about Horatio. Perhaps Horatio just wanted to scare her. Perhaps he had some reason for wanting to keep her from finding out the truth. Morton hadn’t trusted him. Maybe Olive shouldn’t either. She wasn’t going to let some bossy cat tell her what she could do and where she could go in her own house. With a careful glance around to make sure her parents were nowhere in sight, Olive heaved herself into the picture frame.
Reeds whispered softly around her ankles. Bits of sand slipped through her socks and lodged themselves between her toes. Olive could smell the lake’s fishy, warm scent, laced with a whiff of spicy pine.
She walked toward the water. Where the reeds dissolved into a swath of sand, Olive peeled off her socks and rolled up her jeans. The water was the temperature of warm soda pop or cold soup. Olive waded along in the shallow places, hoping to spot the gold thing in the very shallowest water—preferably, right on the sand.
A few feet farther into the lake, something glittered. Olive sighed. The purplish water went over her knees, up to her waist. She tried to grab the gold thing with her toes, but it slipped out of their grip every time. She could feel it, though—something small and cold and hard. She wasn’t going to quit until she knew just what it was. Finally, Olive took a big gulp of air, held on to the spectacles with one hand, squinched her eyes shut, and plunged down under the water.
The floor of the lake felt oozy and slick. She touched a few things that were absolutely not alive anymore, and a few things that might still have been, and then she touched something smooth and solid—something that felt like metal.
Olive popped back out of the water like a cork, holding tight to her prize. In the painting’s dim evening light, it was hard to see, but the thing in her hand looked like a necklace. It had a long, delicate chain and a smooth gold pendant shaped like an egg. Little swirls and curlicues were etched in the metal. Olive draped the chain around her neck and trudged toward the shore, looking down at the necklace so intently that she didn’t notice the fluffy orange cat until she had nearly stepped on him.
Horatio leaped back with a yowl as Olive, and a great deal of lake water, headed onto the sand.
“I’m sorry, Horatio. I didn’t see you.”
“So I noticed,” said the cat. “What have you got there?”
Something in the cat’s suspicious green eyes compelled Olive to lie. “Nothing,” she said, hurriedly dropping the pendant down the inside of her shirt.
“Nothing. Hmm. Very convincing,” said the cat, watching skeptically as Olive struggled to pull her socks over her wet feet. “I’m sure, given a bit more time, you would have come up with something even more stunningly believable.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Olive.
“Yes, well—that probably is true much of the time, but I’m surprised you want to admit it.”
Olive crossed her arms and glared down at the cat, whose fur gleamed like bronze in the painting’s violet light. “I don’t have to tell you everything.”
“No, you don’t,” said the cat. “But it would be a great deal easier if you did.”
“Easier? I haven’t been able to find you for days! Besides, I know you’re keeping secrets from me. Why shouldn’t I keep them from you?”
“Because I know what is best.”
Olive squeezed a dribble of lake water out of her hair. She was getting a bit chilly in her wet clothes, and more than a bit sick of Horatio’s unhelpful answers. “A cat knows what’s best for me?”
The big cat narrowed his eyes. “I am doing my best to protect you. And, by the way, you’re not doing much to make the job easier.”
“It’s your job to protect me?”
“You, and the main floors of this house. Leopold, whom you’ve met, protects the basement. And . . . someone else protects the attic.”
“Oh, I see. That makes perfect sense—cats protecting a house.”
“If you hadn’t noticed,” Horatio enunciated, “we’re not exactly ordinary cats.”
“So just what are you protecting the house from? Besides mice, I mean.”
“Mice?” huffed Horatio. “It’s a bit more serious than mice.” The cat looked up at Olive intently. “If you must know, it is something much bigger and much stronger than you are prepared to deal with. Believe me.”
Something about Horatio’s stare made Olive’s skin prickle, but she tried not to let him see.
“Fine,” she said, breaking his gaze and adjusting the spectacles on her nose. “I found an old necklace. That’s all.”
The cat gave a sigh that seemed to rise all the way up from the tip of his tail. “Well, y
ou’re stuck with it now,” he said. “Keep it safe. Don’t let anyone see it.”
“I’ll put it in my jewelry box. It has a lock.”
The cat rolled his green eyes. “No. Once you’ve put it on, you can’t take it off.”
Olive tried. She pulled and pulled on the chain, but she couldn’t seem to lift it over her head. It was as if every time it reached a level with her nose, the pendant suddenly became a magnet—a magnet that was attracted to Olive. The cat watched, with an I-told-you-so expression on his face.
“Keep it under your clothes,” Horatio whispered. “Don’t let her see it.”
“Who?”
“Ms. McMartin!” Horatio hissed, glancing to the left and right anxiously.
“But Ms. McMartin is dead,” said Olive, feeling very slow.
“Of course she’s dead,” said the cat. “But she’s still here. Just keep that necklace safe!”
Olive’s mind clicked back through all the things she had heard and seen. No one would tell her the whole story. All that she had gathered were baffling fragments of something much bigger and much trickier than she had expected. Still, one fragment kept rising to the top. Olive felt a sudden prickle of excitement and fear—the prickle you feel when your shovel hits something hard, quite deep in the ground, before you have any idea what you’ve found. “Horatio,” said Olive, “what do you know about Aldous McMartin?”
The cat froze. His ears flattened against his head and his fur stood up like a fluffy Mohawk. Olive glanced around. The violet sky was darkening, like cloth soaking up a spill of black ink. The air seemed to turn colder, heavier. “We’ve been noticed,” Horatio hissed. “We need to get out of here. Quickly.”
In a bound, the cat shot through the frame. Alone in the painting, Olive felt it again: that prickling sensation on the back of her neck, and goose bumps flowing down along her arms. Maybe it was just a cool breeze blowing from across the lake. Or maybe somebody was watching her. What was it that Annabelle had said? That people in this house acted like cats getting startled by their own tails? Well, Olive wasn’t going to get scared so easily. She gave the twilit sky above the lake a last, defiant look. Then she pulled herself through the frame and landed with a flop on the carpeted stairs.
The Books of Elsewhere, Vol. 1: The Shadows Page 7