Still Life

by Jacqueline West

  Flash. Flash.

  The light shivered on the carpet, on the polished banister, and on one tiny fleck of green in a distant doorway.

  Olive’s heart surged. She flashed faster.

  The green fleck grew. It became a glint, and then a streak, and then a huge black cat was landing on the edge of the frame as though it were the sill of an open window.

  “Leopold!” Olive gasped. “I’m so glad to see you!”

  Leopold nodded briskly. “This may not be the appropriate time to say so, miss, but I am utterly delighted to see you too,” he murmured back. “Now come with me!”

  OUTSIDE THE PAINTING, the house was dark. Aldous’s presence had chilled the air, leaving the hallway as black and still as the deepest chamber of a cave. The moment she slipped through the frame, Olive’s hands and toes began to sting, and the cold covered the rest of her body with goose bumps—but there was no time to think about that, or even to feel it.

  She chased the glints of Leopold’s eyes into her own bedroom. The light switch clicked uselessly under her fingers. Olive tugged out the flashlight, slashing its beam warily around the room. In the center of the bed, a tuna can breastplate glittered.

  “Milady!” cried Harvey, darting out of a fortress of Olive’s pillows. “You are safe!”

  “Sir Lancelot! Thank goodness!” Olive leaped onto the mattress. “Where’s Horatio?”

  “We ’ave not seen heem,” the cat answered. “Sometimes, when you hide, neizer friends nor foes can find you.”

  “Well—we’ll have to think of a plan without him. Fast. Because Aldous is already here.”

  “We are aware,” said Leopold, with a stately bound onto the bed.

  “He trapped everybody in the painting—my mom and dad, and—”

  “And you, miss,” Leopold pointed out. “And he will already know that you got out again.”

  For the space of a breath, they sat perfectly still. Olive could almost feel the walls of the old stone house leaning in around them. Watching. Listening.

  “He also knows I won’t just leave everybody in there,” Olive whispered. “We have to do something he won’t expect.”

  “Unfortunately, a sneak attack is impossible,” said Leopold. “He oversees all of Elsewhere.”

  “And ’e has already reclaimed zee spectacles and zee paints,” Harvey pointed out. “We ’ave no weapons left to draw him out.”

  “Wait!” Olive’s gasp made a frozen puff in the air. “There is something he might want—the grimoire! It’s with her!”

  “Whom are we discusseeng?” Harvey asked Leopold out of the corner of his mouth.

  “Her,” Leopold answered.

  “Ah.” Harvey inclined his head. “Her who?”

  Leopold blinked. “Who?”

  “Aurelia!” said Olive.

  Both cats stiffened. Leopold’s ears flicked like black switchblades. Harvey’s splotchy fur rose, tufting around the edges of his breastplate.

  “Aurelia . . . is here?” asked Leopold.

  “Hidden inside Elsewhere,” said Olive, already jumping off the bed. “Horatio knew all along. Come on!”

  The cats exchanged a look.

  “What do you think?” Harvey murmured to Leopold.

  Leopold’s whiskers twitched. “If it is the only way . . .”

  “Do you have a better plan?” Olive asked urgently. “Because we’re running out of time!”

  The cats gave each other one more look.

  “Please,” Olive begged. “They need us. Let’s go.”

  Leopold let out a soft breath. “Lead the way, miss.”

  • • •

  With the flashlight shoved back into one pocket and a book of matches from the bathroom wedged into the other, Olive charged toward the still life. In the darkened house, its frame shimmered like mist on cold water.

  They tumbled through the jellyish surface. The two cats watched, keeping mum, as Olive ripped the key out of the strange yellow fruit and pried open the paneled door.

  Aurelia struggled to her feet as Olive and the cats burst in. Her hands trembled against the arms of her chair like withered leaves in a strong wind.

  “Olive Dunwoody,” she whispered. “And . . . is that Leopold? And little Harvey?”

  “Sir Lancelot,” Harvey mumbled, ducking out of sight behind Olive’s shins.

  Leopold pressed close to Olive’s side, his eyes fixed on the shaking woman before them.

  “Have you come for me?” she asked, in a hopeful whisper.

  “No,” said Olive. “We need to take the spellbook back.”

  Aurelia took a step forward. “Is that so?”

  Olive edged toward the shelf where the McMartin grimoire glimmered. The cats followed her like two furry magnets. “But we’re not going to use it, I promise. We just need it for—”

  “I know why you need it.” Aurelia glided closer to Olive. Something strange flickered in her sunken eyes. “Because Aldous is here, and he is going to destroy something you love. Now you need something he loves. But you’re choosing the wrong thing.”

  Before Olive could reach for it, Aurelia’s hand flashed out and grasped the spellbook. “I know how he thinks, Olive. I know what he truly loves.” She tucked the book under her arm. “I can help you . . . if you take me with you.”

  Desperation beat in Olive’s chest like a swarm of wasps against a windowpane. There wasn’t time to argue, or to bargain, or even to think.

  “Fine,” she blurted. “But we have to go now.”

  The strange, flickering thing in Aurelia’s eyes grew brighter.

  The cats watched, as still as gargoyles, as Aurelia glided back toward her armchair. She lifted the heavy silver box from the tabletop. Very gently, she cradled it against the thick leather book, inside the crook of her arm.

  “We’re ready,” she said. “Now, take me to him.”

  • • •

  Crouched in the painted grass below Linden Street, Olive made sure the matches and flashlight were secure. The sky above them had grown blacker still. Thick, ashy clouds billowed through the darkness, erasing the painted stars. A frigid gust of wind swept down the hillside. The cats flanked her, pressing closer as the wind whipped by.

  Beside them, Aurelia stood, staring up the hill. The look on her face was both intent and dreamy, as if she were trying to recognize a far-off song. Cradling the book and the silver box, she started up the slope.

  Olive was about to follow when a voice behind her shouted—

  “Olive!”

  She whirled around.

  A huge orange cat leaped from the picture frame into the misty grass.

  “Horatio!” Olive dropped to her knees, reaching out for the cat. “Where have you been?”

  Horatio let Olive give him a quick stroke. “I’ve been searching for the locket. It seems to have gone missing.”

  “But—” Olive stammered “—but you were the one who took it out of the drawer in the first place!”

  Horatio’s eyes widened. “How on earth did you arrive at that conclusion?”

  “You were the only one who knew where it was!” Olive gestured up the hill, where a pale form was dwindling into the distance. “Just like you were the only one who knew where Aurelia was!”

  Horatio’s eyes grew wider still. “You let her out?” he asked, very softly. “You brought her here?”

  “She said she’d help us with Aldous. And I had to let her out, because she had the spellbook, which you gave her in the first place!”

  “I gave it to her?” Horatio exploded. “Leaving it with her was like locking it in a vault! If there is anyone on earth who has no interest in that book—”

  “Because she already knows everything in it!” Olive interrupted. Harvey’s and Leopold’s eyes zoomed from Horatio’s face back to hers
. “Because she’s a McMartin!”

  “Exactly!” Horatio shouted. “Because—”

  “Because she’s his sister!” Olive yelled.

  Horatio gave a start.

  Harvey and Leopold inched backward.

  Another sudden wind tore down the hillside. Through the swirls of mist, Olive could see Aurelia’s frail, fluttering shape vanish over the crest of the hill.

  “No, Olive,” said Horatio, his voice so low that the rustle of the grass nearly buried it completely. “She’s not his sister. She is his wife.”

  “HIS WIFE?” OLIVE repeated dizzily. “But why would she lie to me?”

  “I suppose she thought you’d be more likely to free her if you didn’t know she’d made a vow to love and honor Aldous McMartin for as long as she lived,” said Horatio sharply. “And look! It worked!”

  “But she said she wouldn’t let him hurt anyone else!” Olive cried as Horatio raced toward the hill.

  The cat glanced back over one shoulder. “We’ll see.”

  Olive, Leopold, and Harvey tore after him.

  The closer they came to the crest of the hill, the harder the wind blew. Olive’s hair lashed across her eyes. Her cuffs twisted around her ankles. The air was full of a thousand icy hands, all shoving her backward. By the time they reached the pavement of Linden Street, the towering trees were lashing nearly to the ground. Branches scraped the cowering houses like warped, furious claws.

  In the dimness, the stone house looked nearly black. Aurelia stood before it, a glimmering, moon-colored splotch against the dark. Her silk robes billowed. The grimoire glittered in the grass at her feet.

  As Olive and the cats struggled toward her, Aurelia raised her chin. Her gray-streaked hair whipped in the wind.

  “Aldous McMartin,” she said.

  The hush that fell over the street was so sudden and total, they might all have been trapped beneath a huge glass lid. The wind died. The trees ceased thrashing. The grass straightened itself.

  Silent seconds tiptoed by.

  Across the street, doors inched open and neighbors peered out. The Nivens family crept onto their porch. Beyond them, Rutherford, Walter, and Mrs. Dewey ventured toward the sidewalk, their eyes fixed on the huge stone house.

  Olive felt the reverberations of her heart against her ribs, its pounding beats making her whole body tremble. Where were her parents? Why hadn’t they come outside?

  At last, the door of the stone house creaked open.

  What stepped through it wasn’t Aldous McMartin.

  It had Aldous’s shape—the bony shoulders, the long arms and hands—but nothing else: No colors, no features, no face. As it slid silently across the porch, Olive saw that it was Aldous’s own painted shadow. It was taller than Aldous, stretched out in the way that a shadow stretches as it angles away from its source, and it moved with a sort of flickering smoothness, gliding down the steps like a pool of oil—or like an insect with so many legs that each one hardly seems to move at all. That first shadow was followed by another, and then another, and then another, until a nest of freshly painted shadows filled the porch, their eyeless faces flicking from side to side.

  The cats huddled against the ground, their fur rising. The hairs on Olive’s skin rose too.

  Can those shadows see? she wondered. Can they think?

  She reached toward the flashlight in her pocket. The shadows turned their blank, black faces toward her, one after another, like a hive operating with a single mind.

  Olive froze.

  There was a soft thump, and Aldous McMartin himself stepped through the front door.

  He strode to the top of the steps where the knot of shadows was thickest, and there he stopped. His eyes fixed on the painted woman. His face was cold and calm, without a flicker of surprise. He had known they were coming, Olive realized. Was that why he had painted this swarm of shadows? But why did he need all of those slippery, warping, writhing things to face his own fragile wife?

  “Aurelia,” he said softly.

  The shadows shifted, tensing . A single one of them slithered out over the lawn, reaching toward Aurelia with its long, boneless arms.

  Aurelia’s waxy face didn’t change. “Aldous,” she whispered back. “It has been a long time.”

  The shadow’s snaking fingers stroked the hem of her robe.

  “It has,” said Aldous.

  “When you left me there . . .” Aurelia paused. “. . . I thought that I would never forgive you.”

  Out of the corner of her eyes, Olive saw the Nivenses moving nearer. Mary’s face was a frightened mask. Walter and the Deweys crept to the edge of the lawn, the cloudiness in their eyes beginning to thin. Olive inched her fingers toward the flashlight again.

  “You did not understand,” said Aldous sternly.

  “But now I do.” Aurelia spread her hands. “You were only trying to save me. You wanted to give me eternity. An eternity with you.”

  Olive saw Aldous’s jaw clench. “You spoke very differently once.”

  “So much can change in a hundred years.” Aurelia’s voice was wistful. “At last, I can see that everything you did, every choice you made, was to save our family. To save our home.”

  She took a step closer to the porch. A few more of the shadows left Aldous and inched toward Aurelia, their eyeless heads following her every move.

  Aurelia opened her arms, tilting her waxy face up toward the spot where Aldous stood. “I forgive you, Aldous McMartin. I will gladly wear your gift once again.”

  Horror poured through Olive’s body. Aurelia wasn’t going to destroy the locket. She was going to side with Aldous to take the house back.

  Without thinking, Olive lunged forward. She whipped the flashlight out of her pocket, her thumb searching for the switch. But before she’d taken a second step, two shadows streaked across the lawn. Their fingers stretched to the length of arms, and their arms grew longer than Olive’s entire body. They coiled around her, pinning her arms, ripping the flashlight out of her fist. The flashlight shot through the air and disappeared over the hillside. One of the shadows dragged Olive to her knees. Another loomed above the cats, keeping them at bay.

  Meanwhile, Aurelia turned toward Rutherford. She pointed, and two more of the shadows elongated to grab him, their limbs wrapping around and around his body like spiders’ thread. Behind their smudgy lenses, Rutherford’s eyes widened with fear.

  “Give it to me,” said Aurelia gently.

  The shadows’ fingers lengthened and groped, and Olive saw the gold pendant flash from Rutherford’s pocket to Aurelia’s hand.

  “Rutherford!” Olive burst out. “You took it?”

  “I knew you were considering giving it to this woman, which I believed to be a risk,” said Rutherford very rapidly. “I believed that Walter and I could destroy the locket instead, but it resisted our attempts.”

  “But you didn’t ask!” Olive shouted back.

  “Would you have said yes?”

  Olive threw out both arms. “No!”

  “My point EXACTLY!” Rutherford shouted.

  “Enough!” roared Aldous, through his teeth.

  A rush of cold wind blasted the street. Everyone but the McMartins and the shadows was flattened to the ground. The wind seemed to rip the air out of Olive’s lungs. Cold pressed down on her like a physical weight. Gasping, she forced her head up from the grass. Two shadows crouched over Rutherford’s prone body, and behind them, Walter and Mrs. Dewey were struggling closer. Olive thought she saw flames beginning to flicker in Walter’s hands—but then another knot of shadows streaked forward. Walter and Mrs. Dewey were thrown backward into the street, pinned by a web of writhing black arms. Mrs. Dewey let out a shriek that made Olive’s stomach twist.

  Aurelia turned to Aldous, the locket dangling from her fingers, and lifted the silver box from the cro
ok of her arm.

  The wind softened. “What is that?” Aldous asked suspiciously.

  “My gift in exchange for yours.” Aurelia’s voice was more delicate and raspy than ever. She set the box on top of the spellbook.

  Olive heard the click of its lid.

  A sudden, instinctive dread sizzled through her body. She craned forward, peering through the dimness, but the surrounding shadows and the freezing wind hid whatever lay inside.

  “You will see in just a moment,” Aurelia whispered, almost as if she had read Olive’s thoughts. “But first . . .” She turned to gaze across the lawn. Her sunken eyes glittered as they hooked on Olive’s. Very slowly, she lifted the locket chain toward her head. “Well?” she murmured. “Aren’t you going to stop me?”

  Olive lurched forward. “Stop!”

  The wind redoubled. It forced her eyes shut, plugging her ears with its howl. The shadows whipped around her legs, dragging her back to the ground. Kicking and clawing, Olive writhed toward the flickering gray blur. “Stop!” she screamed again. The wind ripped her voice away so swiftly that Olive herself couldn’t hear it.

  But then, behind her, another voice gave a shout.

  “Foul sorceress!” A splotchily colored blur soared toward Aurelia’s chest. “Face zee righteous wrath of Lancelot du Lac!”

  One black and one orange blur shot after it.

  Olive squinted upward, fighting the wind and the thrashing black limbs. Shadows had grasped both Leopold and Horatio. She could see the cats’ mouths opening, letting out furious hisses, but the sound was lost in the shriek of the wind. Aurelia’s hands were clamped around Harvey’s throat. His claw raked a deep slit in her arm.

  “Let him go!” Olive screamed. She thrashed one arm free of the entwining shadows and yanked the book of matches from her pocket. With one last desperate lunge forward, she opened its cover.

  Aurelia threw Harvey aside. Her hands lashed out and wrenched Olive upright, locking her in a stony embrace. Olive felt the matchbook slip through her fingers.

  Icy lips moved against her ear. “Thank you,” Aurelia whispered.

  Then, shoving Olive backward, Aurelia turned toward the house. Olive stared, pinioned to the ground by a cocoon of shadows, as Aurelia extended her scratched arm over the open silver box. Beads of painted blood fell into the darkness.