Paint by Magic (19 page)

Now the teeth—painted in a glistening, pearlized white—were bared. My mom had fangs!

That first slam I'd heard ... that must have been the studio door. Where had old Fitzy gone? Maybe he'd gotten hungry for breakfast. Or maybe he just had to pee. I let out a high-pitched, maniacal giggle worthy of Homer. Maybe I was a little hysterical at this point.

But there I was, with the skylight open and nobody in the studio, and the ancient paint box right below me. It was a bird's-eye view. I tugged on the edge of the skylight, and it opened a little more. A kitten could squeeze through—if there had been a kitten on the roof wanting to get in. I tugged harder. The small gap widened further. Now a good-sized dog could get in. One more pull and a regular-sized boy could get in—how could I not try it?

Fitzgerald Cotton used those old paints only when painting his most important subject—my mom. If I took them, would he still paint her with regular paints? Maybe not. So it was worth a try.

I sat on the edge of the skylight and slid my legs through the opening. Then I shimmied along until my body was inside—and I dangled there, my legs waving, searching for a toehold. I guessed I could jump down and land next to the table, grab the paint box, and race out of the room before Fitzgerald Cotton finished his breakfast. Or I could climb back out the window, if necessary, and just sit there on the roof, waiting till the coast was clear. The main thing would be to have the paints in my possession.

My legs are skinny. They slipped right through—
no problemo.
But then there was a
problemo
after all. Hips, butt, torso—

Stuck!

That cement mixer was churning again, and I thought what a mess it would make on the clear glass of the skylight if I threw up all over it. Maybe Cotton would think a big bird had been passing overhead....

My heart thumped and my legs swung and I thought of Doug's dad, who did stuff like this on the tops of the highest mountains for a living. And loved it.

"Help," I whispered. Nothing happened, and no one came. But slowly, below me, the open door to the wardrobe closed. I stared down at the wardrobe and thought I could see it swelling, the doors bowing outward as if pushed by a very great presence inside. I heard a hissing sort of sound, the sound of something escaping from the wardrobe, and I held my breath because the hissing brought with it a foul smell.

Evil,
I whispered.

Then both of the wardrobe doors burst open and banged closed again, hard—open, closed, open, closed!—and I could hear laughter inside my head. Although I knew it was the dumbest thing to do, I just didn't care anymore, and as the panic welled up in me I was shouting, "Help! Help! Help!" at the top of my lungs.

I heard footsteps on the stairs, but I was so totally panicked I couldn't even tell if they were coming from inside or out: porch steps or attic stairs? Then the studio door slammed open. Fitzgerald Cotton stood there, his still-wet hair standing in peaks on his head, his eyes wide with alarm. I guess it would be a freaky thing to have a voice screaming from inside the room you'd just left—He stared up at me, and the alarm changed to amazement.

"Help?" I sort of sobbed. He just kept staring up at me. Then the amazed expression grew cunning. He was smiling—an awful smile. An evil smile. And I knew at that moment where I had seen that smile before. My blood froze.

He grabbed his sketch pad. He snatched up a stick of charcoal off the table. "Hold it right there, boy," he called. "Don't move a muscle. Okay, tip your head a little to the left—yes, just like that."

Fitzgerald Cotton was sketching me again.

There was a huge crash—but it wasn't me falling through the skylight onto Fitzgerald Cotton and his sketch pad. No, it was—ta-dah!—
Homeboy to the rescue!
Homer slammed the studio door against the wall and stood in the doorway, hands on his hips.

"Hey, Uncle Fitzy! What about Connor?"

Uncle Fitzy just kept smiling this really awful smile. "Hay is for horses, Homer, my lad," he said slowly, rolling out the words like we had all day. "Or haven't you heard?"

Homer stepped into the room and gaped up at me. "You all right?"

I took a deep breath. "Oh, I'm hanging in there," I said. Always the funny guy, but my voice came out shaky. And my back was scraped where I'd slid through the little skylight. But the hissing was gone, the wardrobe doors were closed, and I thought the terrible sensation of evil had lessened. I could still smell the foul odor, though, and I could feel something warm and wet trickling under my T-shirt. Blood?

Had to be. I pressed my lips together and told myself sternly that I would
not
cry. "How's the rash?" I asked. "Everybody feeling pretty sick down there? Any pus?"

Homer just stared up at me. "Uncle Fitzy! You have to help Connor—he's hurt!"

"All in good time," said his uncle. "It isn't every day a body falls from the ceiling right here in my studio, is it? A good artist makes use of everything that comes along." He strode over and stood under me, glaring up through the open skylight. "Isn't that right, boy? Can you hear me?"

Homer ran to the other side of the studio and got a chair. He dragged the chair over while Fitzgerald Cotton shaded the sketch with his charcoal. Homer stood upon the chair and tugged on my feet while Fitzgerald Cotton took his own sweet time finishing the sketch.

My shoes came off in Homer's hands. "Yow!" I yelped through the opening. "Don't pull, Homeboy. You'll take the rest of my skin off."

Homer let go. His uncle held the sketch pad up. 'What do you think? Is it a fair likeness? My muse has not returned after all, and so I must take my subjects as I find them."

I kicked my legs, hoping to make contact with his smirking face. He caught hold of my feet and gave a strong pull. I felt like my legs would come off. A couple more drops of blood trickled down my back.

"Uncle Fitzy!" shouted Homer. "He's
bleeding!
"

"So he is, so he is." Fitzgerald Cotton gave me another sharp tug. "And what's a little blood between friends?" Then he stopped pulling. He stood there for a minute, considering me with that creepy smile. I felt like a beetle stuck in a spider's web. But at least a beetle would be wrapped up in soft spider gossamer. My back felt like fire.

Fitzgerald Cotton rubbed his hands over his face and scrubbed his fingers through his hair. When he looked up at me again, the awful smile was gone. It was as if there were two artists here—one with the cruel smile and actions to match, the other with a baffled expression on his face. The foul smell was gone now.

The baffled-looking Fitzgerald Cotton reached up and gripped my legs firmly. "All right now, all right, lad. Just a minute, we'll get you unstuck." He climbed on Homer's chair. "I'm going to have to push you back up, I think, rather than pull you through. Hang on."

What did he think I'd been doing all this time?

"Ready now?" he asked. "All right, then, here we go. Heave-
ho!
"

The edge of the opening scraped painfully against my back as he hoisted me up. My hands scrabbled against the shingles, trying to find something that I could use to haul myself back out onto the roof.

At last I was up. Free. I scrambled shakily onto my knees, taking in great gulps of air.

Below me I heard Fitzgerald Cotton's craggy voice: "Creep on over to the porch roof, boy. Homer's getting the ladder."

"Th—thank you," I called down to him.

"As soon as you're safely down, get yourself back up to this studio."

I swallowed hard. "Yessir." But it would be crazy to go back inside with him.

I crawled over the ridge.

"Wow!" Homer said. "You are in the biggest trouble ever!" But I saw admiration in his eyes.

I climbed down the ladder Homer held against the house. As we walked up the porch steps, I was still trying to tell myself it was stupid to go back up to the studio. Worse than stupid: dangerous. Plus, my back was killing me. I ought to be running away as fast as I could. There was no sign of Elsie or Betty or Chester, and I was glad. Then suddenly Joanna and Mr. Riley were at the front door, opening it and stepping out onto the porch.

"Oh, there you are, boys," said Joanna. She gave me a strange look, and I wondered if she'd noticed something was wrong but wasn't sure what. I guess there wasn't as much blood as I'd thought, or she'd surely see it pooling at my feet. "Betty was looking for you."

Mr. Riley focused on a spot a few feet above us. He crooked his elbow out to the side, and Joanna placed her hand on it. "Shall we go, my dear Mrs. Cotton?"

"Yes, indeed, Mr. Riley. I am looking forward to our time together."

"Uh—have fun," I called weakly.

Homer gazed after them, his shoulders drooping. "So much for plan A," he said dejectedly. "And Gramma says Chess has to stay in bed this afternoon with his stomachache."

"I don't think any plan
A
ever works," I said. Mine sure hadn't. And plan
B
wasn't working very well, either. It felt like hours since I'd first climbed up on the roof, but it wasn't even lunchtime. If only my mom weren't on those canvases, I'd be out of here so fast your head would spin. But she was—and so it was time for plan C.

Then Betty ambushed me. She materialized out of nowhere, as if she really were the ghost I thought for a moment I'd seen the night before. She grabbed my arm and hauled me into the living room. If there had been a door to slam, she'd have slammed it. But instead she just shoved me toward the couch and collapsed into the armchair, across from it. Homer had followed us, and he stood there, hands on hips.

"What, Betty?" he asked. "Connor's supposed to go upstairs. He's in big trouble with Uncle Fitz."

"He's in big trouble with me," she retorted.

"Why?" Homer asked, looking from one of us to the other.

Betty heaved a huge sigh and didn't answer. I cleared my throat. "It's okay, Homer. You can go. This is between me and Betty."

"Is it?" she muttered. "I don't think so. I think your lies ought to be of interest to the whole family."

'"Lies'?" repeated Homer. His eyes narrowed. "We don't like liars around here."

"Oh, shut up, Homeboy," I snapped, and I was suddenly so furious with everybody I just felt like screaming. I couldn't fight this war on all fronts. I was here to save Mom, and that's what I had to concentrate on. I was going to get kicked out of the house, anyway, now, after the morning's fiasco on the roof ... and I still didn't have that sketch, and I still hadn't stolen that old paint box, and worst of all there was something unspeakable up in that studio, inside the wardrobe. Mom was endangered by it, and so was I, and so, probably, were all the Cottons. So why
not
just tell Betty and Homer the truth—riot just to get them off my back, but to enlist their help?

"All right already," I said resolutely. "I
have
been lying to you. But only because the truth is so weird I can hardly believe it myself."

"Try us," said Betty calmly. She got up out of the chair and came over to sit next to me on the couch. "Tell us, Connor," she urged in her most sensible voice. "I know you have secrets. I don't believe you're an orphan who has been wandering the streets! You're too
clean,
for one thing. And your clothes are ... strange. Your shoes. Well, you just don't fit in, somehow. I want you to tell us everything."

I looked straight at Betty. I could see the green flecks in her eyes. "I'll tell you a story."

"Is it
Star War si
" asked Homer.

"No," I said. "But it's also about good fighting evil." And then I took a deep breath. "First of all, your
Pammie
is my
mother.
I know, I know," I said quickly, as Homer's mouth opened to interrupt me. "I know she was your uncle's muse and everything, but before that—before she ever even
heard
of you—she was my mom. And she still is." I was trying to feel my way into the story. How much to tell and how much to leave out? "Her name is Pamela Rigoletti." I saw Betty's mouth drop open, but I hurried on. "She's a lawyer. My dad's into computers—well, never mind; I know you don't know what those are. It doesn't matter. Anyway, his name is Grant Chase. I know, different names—but that's how married people sometimes do it in my, uh,
area.
And Pamela and Grant, they have two kids—me and my sister, Crystal. Crystal is your age, Betty."

Homer crossed his arms and rolled his eyes. Betty cleared her throat. "Rigoletti? Pammie told us she couldn't remember her last name."

"Maybe she couldn't." I drew in a big breath. That had been the easy part. Now for the really impossible stuff.

"We live here in Shady Grove, but not in 1926."

"Not—" Betty broke in. Then she shook her head.

"I know it sounds impossible," I hurriedly continued. "But we're, like, about eighty years in the future. Don't ask me how these two times exist at the same time! All I know is, they do—and your house stands where our house will be built one day. And one day my mom will open an old art book and find a sketch inside, a sketch by the famous artist Fitzgerald Cotton."

"Famous!" said Homer. "You liar."

"It's the truth, and it already happened," I said stiffly. "My mom somehow found a sketch that your uncle had drawn long ago, though she didn't know that then—and she must have been freaked out, because the sketch was of
her.
I sure was freaked out, anyway, when I saw it. And when I touched it, a cold wind started blowing..."

I told the whole story, not even caring—right then—whether they believed me. It was just such a relief to tell them who I really was and how I'd come to be there. I told as much of the story as I'd figured out. That somehow Mom had come here and stayed a year and been Fitzgerald Cotton's muse, and then somehow she'd come home again, right to the time she'd left. I knew that had to be true, because otherwise we would have missed her. I hoped if I ever got home that I, too, would return to the minute I left. It would be terrible if all the time I was here, Mom and Dad were worrying about me and calling the police to file a missing person report and everything.