“Well,” drawled Morton, still sounding like he was talking to a kindergartener and enjoying it very much, “where’s the last place you saw him acting like the normal Horatio?”
Mr. and Mrs. Dunwoody often used this sort of questioning with Olive. Well, where’s the last place you saw your retainer? Did you have it in your mouth when you woke up? Was it there before you went to bed? How did it end up behind the frozen peas? Now her brain clicked backward through its collection of Horatio memories: His strange behavior in the attic last night, as he tried to avoid the flashlight’s beam. His silhouette gliding past Olive’s bedroom door after she’d been woken by the recurrent bumps and creaks. His green eyes tilting up toward the painting of the craggy hill, where she’d surprised him one afternoon. His cold claw, stuck to the cuff of her blue jeans as she fell back through the frame around the very same painting…
Olive sucked in a breath. “I’m going to come back here tonight,” she said slowly. “I think from inside this frame I might be able to see what I’ve been missing.” She turned back to Morton. “And, if you wouldn’t mind—I’d like your help.”
Morton’s smile threatened to reach all the way to his ears.
Never in her life had Olive been more impatient for a Saturday to end. She and Mr. Dunwoody raked the backyard, where a thick quilt of maple leaves was already smothering the neatly refilled hole behind the garden. She decorated three rocks with fingernail polish. She even got all of her homework done, with an entire half of the weekend left to go. And still, the evening moved about as quickly as a snail stuck to a wad of chewed bubble gum. After dinner and a seemingly endless game of Forty-two, Olive said good night to her parents and charged up the stairs to her bedroom, where she changed into a black T-shirt and a pair of dark flannel pajama pants. Then she lay down in bed with a book to wait.
After what felt like hours, she heard her parents’ footsteps creaking up the staircase. Their bedroom door clicked shut. Olive listened to the roar of blood pounding through her body as several more minutes ticked by. Then, just when she was about to slide out of bed, there was a tiny squeak from her own bedroom door.
Olive froze. A slit of moonlight, no wider than a finger, fell across her bed. Olive lay perfectly still, pretending to be asleep. The slit of moonlight disappeared. A minute later, she heard a soft creak somewhere in the distance. When the house had sunk back into silence, she slipped into the hallway, closed her bedroom door behind her, and dove into the painting of Linden Street.
This time, Morton was waiting for her. When Olive landed with a flump on the dewy ground, his round head popped up just a few yards away, the tufts of his pale hair mingling with the long green grass.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Fine,” whispered Olive. She turned back to peer through the picture frame, but whatever had made the creaking sounds had already disappeared again.
“I wasn’t sure when you’d be back, so I just decided to wait here,” he told her.
“Thanks.” Olive knelt next to Morton in the grass, sending up a swirl of mist that clung stubbornly around her.
“So, what are we watching for?” asked Morton.
Olive hopped up again and beckoned Morton to the picture frame. He stood on his toes to look over its edge. “See how you can look all the way down the hall from here?” Olive asked. Morton nodded. “I think something funny has been going on with that painting—that very last one, down there by the door to the pink room.” She pointed. Morton craned to follow her finger. “But I can’t see that picture from the door of my own room.” Olive sighed, blinking through the frame. “I just hope whatever it is happens again before I have to get back out of here.”
For a while, they both stood at the picture frame, gazing over its edge. The hallway was black and still. Even the beams of moonlight on the carpet were motionless. After several silent minutes of watching, they decided to play Twenty Questions, but Morton was jumpy and distracted, and Olive kept seeing imaginary intruders darting down the hallway from the corner of her eye. Olive’s toes were just starting to feel prickly and numb and Morton was saying “You already asked if it was bigger than a breadbox” for the fifth or sixth time, when, at the far end of the hall, a shadow shifted.
“Look!” whispered Olive. She and Morton huddled below the frame, letting just their eyes peep over its corners.
From the darkness of the pink bedroom, a smaller blot of darkness emerged. It stepped into the hall, where the moonlight from the house’s front windows snipped and stretched its shadow. And casting that long black shadow was a cat.
“Is that Horatio?” breathed Morton.
“Sort of,” Olive breathed back.
Behind Horatio glided another blot of darkness. This one was tall and thin, and it cast a shadow so long that it reached almost to the frame where Olive and Morton were crouching. Olive squinted at it, trying to get a closer look without letting herself be seen. The shadow moved along the hall, passing briefly through a blue beam of moonlight. In that instant, Olive made out the tall, lean shape of a man’s body—a man with long, wavy hair and ragged clothes; a man with features that looked as though they could have been carved out of wood. The man was carrying two bags. One bag was small, and had short handles that looped over his left arm. The other was a large cloth sack, kind of like a pillowcase with a drawstring. And something inside of the sack was moving.
The sack made a muffled whimpering sound—a sound Olive had heard at least once before. The man gave the sack a sharp shake. The whimpering stopped. He paused before the painting of the craggy hill, and, as Olive stared, barely able to breathe, he reached into the drawstring sack. With his arm still inside it, he climbed into the picture frame, hauling both bags with him.
Horatio sat on the hallway carpet, watching the man disappear. Then the cat got to his feet and trotted along the hall, past the frame of Linden Street, and down the staircase into the darkness.
Morton turned, wide-eyed, to Olive. “Who is that? How did he—”
“Morton, I’m not sure what’s going on yet, but I need you to follow Horatio. Try to keep him away from the painting that man climbed into. Keep him away from the whole upstairs, if you can. Will you do that?”
Morton nodded.
Olive grabbed him by the hand, and they climbed one after the other through the frame into the upstairs hallway.
“Be careful,” Olive whispered.
“You be careful,” Morton whispered back. Giving her one last anxious glance, he hurried down the stairs.
Olive rushed along the hall, made sure the spectacles’ ribbon was secure around her neck, and hoisted herself as soundlessly as she could into the painting of the craggy hill to follow the shadowy man.
22
AFTER THE DARKNESS of the hallway, the afternoon light inside the painting felt strangely bright. The cloudy gray sky forced Olive to squint. The waves of flowers that surrounded her on all sides now seemed prickly and harsh and threatening. There was something very strange about this place—the way that it changed with every viewing or visit, as though someone were manipulating it. And Olive had a guess about who that someone could be.
She took a blinky look around, her mind racing. The young man was nowhere in sight. Still, Olive knew he couldn’t be far away, and she did not want to confront him alone. With a last glance around, she set off at a run up the slope toward the little stone church, while the waves of flowers snagged at her pajamas with their jagged stems.
The painting of Morton’s parents waited just where she had left it, propped in the church’s last pew. Olive grabbed the canvas and carried it back out into the daylight, pausing at the crest of the hill to scan the forest below. There, amidst the trees down the slope to her right, was a ribbon of smoke. Olive tucked the painting under her arm and raced toward the floating trail.
The brambles on the hillside seemed to thicken as she ran through them, their thorny twigs scraping her ankles. She had to stop twice to disentangle her f
lannel cuff. Then she scurried on even faster, galloping through a hedge of bracken and into the gold-canopied forest. The cold air felt like a saw blade in her throat.
As she neared the cottage, Olive forced her feet to slow down. She dodged from one clump of birch trees to another, staying hidden. Through the papery trunks, she could spot the tiny shack with its steady stream of smoke. Its door stood open, but Olive couldn’t hear any sounds coming from inside. Behind a cluster of tree trunks, she propped the painting of Morton’s parents on the ground, readjusted the spectacles, and crawled into the canvas.
Mr. and Mrs. Nivens did not look surprised to see her. Of course, they probably wouldn’t have looked surprised if she had cartwheeled across their floor, shooting grape jelly from her toes and singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” backward. As Olive got to her feet, panting, they went on smiling glassily. Mrs. Nivens squinted her much-too-large eyes. Mr. Nivens moved one sausagey hand in what might have been a wave or an involuntary nervous spasm. If he had nerves, that is.
“Hi,” said Olive in a whisper. “I need your help. Will you come with me, please?”
Mr. and Mrs. Nivens went on smiling.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” said Olive.
She reached for Mrs. Nivens’s hand this time. It lay in her grasp like a slick white slug. “Hold on to each other,” she commanded. Then she hauled Mr. and Mrs. Nivens through the edge of the canvas, back out into the golden forest.
Once the painted people were upright again, Olive hustled them away from their deserted canvas. She dragged them farther from the cottage, Mr. Nivens marching awkwardly on his kneeless legs, and Mrs. Nivens shuffling along inside of her voluminous skirts, until they had reached the shelter of a gigantic oak tree. The cottage stood in the distance, almost out of sight.
“Okay,” Olive whispered. “Now I need you to make some noise.”
The painted people smiled at her.
“Noise,” Olive repeated. “Sounds. Talking. Anything. Noise.”
Mrs. Nivens squinted. Mr. Nivens twitched his furry mustache.
“Make noise!” pleaded Olive. “Arrrr! Mmmmmmm! Rarararar! Reeee!”
“Rrrraaarrrr?” said Mr. Nivens.
“MmmmMMMM,” said Mrs. Nivens.
“That’s it!” Olive exclaimed. “Louder! MMMMM!! RRRRRR!!!”
Mr. and Mrs. Nivens both began talking at once. “MmmmMMMMMmmmm!”
“RAAaaarrrraaaeeeeaahhh…”
Olive craned around the tree trunk toward the cottage. The young man’s head had appeared in the open door.
“Good!” she whispered, waving her hands like an overzealous orchestra conductor. “Keep going! Mmmmm! Rrrrr!”
“Rrrraaaaaarrrreeeeaaarrrrrr!”
“MmmmmMMMM! MmmmmMMMMMM!!”
The young man stepped out of the shack and stood in front of its open door, craning his head for the source of this strange sound.
“Mmmmm!!!” enthused Mrs. Nivens.
“RRRReeeeeaaarRR!” agreed Mr. Nivens.
The young man headed in their direction.
Olive hunkered low to the ground and sidled around to the other side of the oak tree, leaving the painted people to their noisemaking. The man drew nearer, his bright hazel eyes flicking from side to side. Olive waited until a large gap had formed between him and the cottage. Then, keeping a barrier of trees between her body and the man’s line of sight, she bolted toward the clearing.
Olive darted across the ground in a final, panicked burst, and zoomed through the cottage’s open door. She peered back out, heart hammering. The young man was still walking slowly away, looking around. She had a little bit of time.
Olive scanned the cluttered room. The tools and utensils and cloths and herbs still hung in clusters on the walls. But where were the two bags the man had been carrying when Olive spotted him in the hall? She dropped to her knees. In the darkness beneath the long, narrow cot pressed into one corner, Olive spotted the leather bag with handles. She dragged it out into the light. Now that she saw it up close, something about the bag looked familiar. She had seen this bag before, she was sure—but it had been part of a jumble of luggage, and it had seemed forgettable and unimportant compared to the more interesting things all around it…
The attic. That was where she had seen it. It had been part of the pile of musty boxes and steamer trunks that had probably gone unused for decades. Now here it was, being used once again. Olive’s heart clenched like a fist. Yes—the young man had been in the attic. Where else had he been? And what else may he have found?
Shaking, Olive unlatched the rusty clasps and looked inside the old leather bag.
It was full of jars. Her jars.
Here was the indigo, and the crimson, and the black and white and yellow. And here were smaller, stoppered bottles full of bright, opaque hues, all looking richer and smoother than the versions she had concocted. Paints. Olive shook the bottles aside. At the bottom of the bag lay a sheaf of papers, their taped seams reflecting the faint gray daylight that came through the cottage door. Olive’s stomach swirled. She grabbed the heavy leather bag, staggering to her feet.
She still had to find the other bag—the one that had moved and whimpered. From somewhere against the cottage’s far wall, she heard a weak little thump.
Olive dove into the corner, where there sat a heavy wooden box with a hinged lid. Dropping the leather bag, which hit the floor with a glassy clunk, Olive used both hands to heft the lid open. Inside, half hidden by split firewood, was the drawstring sack. It thrashed and kicked in Olive’s arms as she hoisted it. The bag and its knotted ropes were painted; up close, Olive could see the faint brushstrokes that imitated woven fibers. She pinned the bag to the ground with one knee so that it couldn’t leap back into its place in the box, and tried to untie the ropes that held it shut. Not only were the knots tricky to untie, but each time she pulled a painted thread loose, it wove itself into place again. The young man wouldn’t be gone for much longer, Olive knew. Desperately, she scanned the tools on the wall. A row of knives hung between a small saw and something that looked like a metal spatula. Still grasping the twisting, jerking bag, which was now emitting a series of impatient grunts, Olive grabbed the smallest knife. She cut through the ropes and tossed them to the ground, where they rapidly rewove and reknotted themselves. Olive yanked the bag open.
Warm orange fur brushed against her skin. Bright green eyes stared up at her above a tightly bound and muzzled mouth.
Being careful not to cut anything that didn’t deserve it, Olive slit the cords that held Horatio’s paws together and severed the bands of cloth covering his mouth. She dropped the knife, which quickly flew back to its spot on the wall.
“Horatio,” she whispered. “I’m so glad to see you. Are you all right?”
“Nothing is all right,” hissed the cat. “We need to get out of here.”
Before Horatio could protest, Olive scooped up the massive cat in both arms and scuttled clumsily to the doorway. The young man was nowhere in sight. Instead of going back the way she had come, Olive slunk around the cottage in the opposite direction. Then she dashed into the trees with Horatio in tow.
“My hero,” said Horatio dryly as he bounced along in Olive’s arms. “Might you consider setting me down now? There is a very good reason for more creatures having four legs than two.”
Olive put Horatio down on a thick patch of yellow leaves.
“Thank you,” said the cat. His bright eyes surveyed the forest. “This way,” he announced, setting off at a brisk trot. Olive scurried after him.
“Horatio, what’s going on?” she panted as she ran. “There’s the portrait in the attic, and there’s another you, but it’s just paint, and that homeless man was getting out by using you, I guess, and you—I mean the other you—didn’t actually get rid of the jars and the paint-making instructions, because that man has them, and the other you said I dug the hole in the backyard, but I didn’t, and I don’t—”
“Olive,” Hora
tio interrupted as Olive gasped for air, “could you possibly save that ridiculously unclear explanation for a time when we are not in immediate danger?” The cat paused, ears and whiskers twitching. He turned slightly to the right before breaking into a run again. “As for what is going on…I’ve had considerable time to ponder that question, as I’ve spent the last several days tied inside of a potato sack, where entertainment options were a bit limited. Here’s what I have gathered: Annabelle did dig the hole that led to the tunnel, but she didn’t take any of the jars.”
“Why not?”
“There would have been no point. She couldn’t get the jars to Aldous, inside of Elsewhere. She needed you to do that.”
Unpleasant memories snagged at Olive like the painted bracken: The locket with Aldous’s last portrait, which she had brought straight to Annabelle. The spellbook, which she had unknowingly let lead her around the house, until she had set Annabelle free again…
Olive dug her fingernails into her palms. “She knew just what I would do,” she said softly. “She always does.”
Horatio glanced up at her, and his eyes were not unkind. “She understands how your mind works, Olive. In some ways, you and Annabelle are very much alike. You’re both clever. You’re both loyal. You’re both unreasonably obstinate.” He arched one whiskery eyebrow. “Annabelle guessed that you would bring the papers and paints out of the tunnel, and then the house could guide you exactly where it wanted you. Right here.”
Still running, Olive glanced up at the cloudy gray sky. It seemed to grow even darker as she gazed at it—just as the skies had darkened when Olive first visited Elsewhere, when Aldous McMartin was watching over his painted worlds, manipulating them, causing winds to rise and trees to rattle…
“He’s controlling this place, isn’t he?” she asked Horatio, even though she didn’t need an answer. She looked over her shoulder at the forest, at the branches rustling in a sudden breeze. He could make the wind blow, and the skies turn black, and one little golden leaf dance through the air. “It’s him, isn’t it?” she whispered.
The Second Spy: The Books of Elsewhere: Volume 3 Page 14