The Strangers (8 page)

From her spot on the bottom step, Olive listened to Rutherford and Mrs. Dewey telling Walter good night, and to their footsteps thumping across the porch and down the steps before dwindling away into the whispering darkness.

Finally, the house was still.

Several seconds passed before Olive heard the rustle of fabric. Morton scooted down the stairs to Olive’s step. He pulled back his ghostly hood. Without saying a word, he wrapped one skinny arm around her back, and then, so softly she wasn’t sure she felt it at all, he began to pat her on one shoulder. And that was how they sat, not speaking, until Olive was ready to stand up again.

Everyone stayed in Olive’s room that night. The reading lamp formed a glowing barricade around the bed where Olive lay, still dressed in her jabberwocky sweat suit. Hershel, her worn brown bear, sagged comfortingly against her chest. The three cats positioned themselves around her, Leopold at her feet, Horatio at her side, and Harvey near her head. Morton sprawled on the floor, just beyond the border of the light. Annabelle’s filigreed locket, which had once held her grandfather’s portrait, glimmered on Olive’s vanity like a poisonous reminder. Olive could almost see Aldous’s portrait slithering out of it, swelling to fill the house with darkness. With a deep breath, she pulled her eyes away.

Olive set her father’s glasses very carefully on the bedside table, so she would know just where they were when he came back. And he
would
come back, she told herself. Their lenses looked cold and empty in the yellow light.

“Nothing else appears to have been taken,” said Horatio, his sharp eyes fixed on Olive’s face. “The grimoire is still safely hidden. The paintings and other furnishings are all where they belong.”

“The tunnel is untouched,” said Leopold.

“The attic is undisturbed as well,” added Harvey, wriggling out of his robe and unfastening the pincushion that had formed the Hunchcat’s hump.

Olive nodded. She knew she should feel relieved by this news, but she didn’t. There wasn’t room left inside her to feel anything at all.

“Tomorrow we will continue our search. Against us, with all of our allies on Linden Street, Annabelle will not stand a chance.” Horatio’s tail flicked over Olive’s arm, almost like a soothing hand. “We will find your parents, Olive.”

Olive looked down at Morton. He had curled up in a small white ball in the shadows, with his face tilted up toward hers. He didn’t speak, but Olive knew what he must be thinking. The McMartins had taken
his
parents too, and they still hadn’t been found.

They might never be found.

Quiet settled throughout the room like raindrops filling an empty cup. Outside, beyond the window, the twigs of the leafless ash tree clattered softly. Olive was sure she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep, but her eyelids insisted on sliding shut, and she felt too hollow and heavy to pull them back up. There was a last whispering rush of wind, and then even the darkness disappeared.

“
O
LIVE,” CALLED HER
mother’s voice.

The voice was soft and far away, floating toward Olive’s ears through a wall of wispy gray clouds. A hand tapped lightly at her door. “Olive, it’s time to get up,” her mother called again. “You’re already running thirteen point five minutes late for the school bus . . .”

Olive’s eyes slid open.

Her bedroom was lit by gray morning light. A set of wire wings, two rumpled gloves, and a pair of painted goggles lay in a pile on the floor beyond the edge of her bed.

Olive frowned down at the goggles. That’s right—this was the day after Halloween. That meant that this was Sunday. And
Sunday
meant that she didn’t have to go to school. She didn’t have to go
anywhere.
She didn’t have a thing to do but pour her haul of candy onto her bedspread and sort the treats into Most Delicious, Semi-Tasty, and Still Better Than Pickled Beets piles. Smiling to herself, Olive snuggled back into her pillows.

The branches of the ash tree tapped gently at the windowpane.
That’s
what she had heard when she thought someone was knocking at her door. And her mother hadn’t been calling for her to get up, because her mother was—

Her mother was . . .

Olive sat up.

The hollowness of the house seemed to widen around her. She could feel the stillness on every side, filling the rooms and hallways in place of the burbling coffeepot and clicking computer keys. Her heartbeat echoed in the emptiness.

On the pillow beside her, a damp orange cat began to stir.

“I hope we did not wake you,” said Horatio, running a paw over his whiskers. “You needed a good night’s sleep as much as I needed a bath.”

Olive looked blearily around. Morton’s ghost costume lay crumpled on the rug. Leopold’s sash hung neatly over the back of the vanity chair. “Where is everyone?” she asked.

“Harvey took Morton home some time ago. The morning light was making him uncomfortable. Leopold is surveying the grounds.”

“Oh.” Olive pulled her knees to her chest, hugging herself tight. “Should you be guarding your territory too?”

“I’ve been guarding
you,
” Horatio answered. He stopped brushing his whiskers, and his penetrating green eyes settled on Olive’s face. “You are not alone here, Olive.”

Olive tried to give Horatio a smile, but the best she could manage was a twitchy grimace. “Actually, I’d
like
to be alone for a few minutes,” she said. “I need to change my clothes.”

Once the cat had padded into the hallway, Olive hauled her legs out of bed and trudged across the room to her dresser. Her body felt as though it had been scooped out and refilled with wet sand. She could barely manage to yank a sweater over her head and wriggle into a pair of jeans.

Once she was dressed, Olive shuffled out into the hall. Each creak of the floorboards seemed to thunder through the house. Sounds that disappeared on an ordinary day—the buzz of the refrigerator, the low breath of the furnace huffing from far below—hung in the air, startling and strange. Even the paintings along the staircase seemed to have noticed the change in the house. A dark glint shifted over their surfaces as Olive passed by, like multiplied shadows gliding after her.

By the time she reached the foot of the staircase, Olive felt too heavy to take another step. She gazed down at the rug, still twisted to one side, and the candy scattered across the floor like colorfully wrapped hailstones.

A board creaked on the front porch. Olive glanced up as Walter’s lanky silhouette paced across the windows. Leopold was out there somewhere, patrolling the lawn. Next door, a pair of odd but kindly witches was waiting to help her, and in the house one door beyond that, a boy and his grandmother were probably just waking up and beginning to collect the ingredients for a new set of spells.

She
wasn’t
alone.

Olive took a deep breath.

Then she knelt down and began to gather the candy back into its bowl, counting the pieces out loud to herself as she went.

When she’d dropped in the last one (there were eighty-four pieces, she was almost sure), Olive pushed herself back to her feet. She looked around the empty hallway. She’d left the hall lights burning all night long, but in the morning sun, they looked watery and faint, like cellophane wrappers with nothing left inside. She switched them off, watching the paintings on the walls dim from glinting sheets of color into something darker, and a thought struck her so suddenly that it almost knocked her back to the floor.

What if—somehow—Annabelle had been able to trap Olive’s parents Elsewhere? What if they were stuck there right now, watching Olive drift through the empty rooms while their bodies turned slowly into paint?

“Horatio!” Olive screamed.

The cat appeared at the head of the stairs. “What?” he asked. “What did you find?”

Olive darted to the bottom step. “Horatio—the grimoire is safe, isn’t it?”

“It remains in the very spot where I hid it myself.”

Olive clutched the front of her shirt. “And I’ve still got the spectacles—but what if Annabelle found some other way to put my parents Elsewhere?” She wrapped both hands around the banister, clutching it so hard her wrists ached. “Wouldn’t that be the worst thing she could do? Trapping them right here, in their own house, where we wouldn’t even think to look for them?”

“Olive, it is extremely unlikely that Annabelle could have—”

“Stop!” Olive shouted. “You sound like Rutherford! Please, Horatio, I have to make sure. It might already be too late!”

Horatio’s whiskers twitched. “Very well. I’ll tell Leopold to search the paintings on the main floor and Harvey to examine each canvas in the attic. You and I will search upstairs.”

“Yes!” Olive exclaimed, scrambling back up the staircase as Horatio flew down. “And please hurry!”

Olive tore to the left, toward her parents’ end of the hallway. In the small white room on the right, which contained nothing but stacks of unpacked boxes, Olive shoved the spectacles onto her face. The room’s only painting depicted a grumpy-looking bird on a fencepost. As Olive plunged through its frame, the bird took off, squeaking and squawking into the sky. The rest of the painting was uninhabited. A few stalks of grass shivered against the fence, and the green field and blue sky loomed around her as solidly as walls.

“Mom!” Olive called. “Dad!” But even the grumpy bird had stopped squawking.

In her parents’ bedroom, Olive swallowed a sob at the familiar sights and smells: her mother’s chalk-dusted brown cardigan hanging over the back of a chair, the minty scent of her father’s aftershave, and the big white bed, with its perfectly symmetrical arrangement of pillows. But there wasn’t time to sprawl on the bed and cry, messing up all of its right angles.

Olive dashed across the room, hanging on tight to the bottom of the picture frame as she pushed her head into the painting of an old-fashioned sailing ship. A blast of salty ocean wind whished through her hair. Below her, the purplish waves rippled and roared.

“Dad! Mom!” she shouted over the sound. “Are you here?”

There was no answer.

Olive waited, watching the ship rock slowly back and forth, never getting closer to its port. Then she pulled herself back through the jelly-ish surface and dropped to the bedroom floor.

In the room’s other painting, a tall, slender man sat reading a book in a gazebo, surrounded by a lush green garden. He bolted to his feet, dropping his book and catching it awkwardly again as Olive clambered through the frame.

“Holy cats!” said the man. “You can climb
in
here?”

Olive stumbled to her feet. There was no time to answer questions. And there certainly was no time to be shy. Cautious, maybe—but not shy. Keeping her back near the frame, she demanded, “Have you seen my parents?”

The lanky man tucked the book under one arm. “Your parents?” he repeated. “I think so. Yes. Well, yes and no.”

Olive’s heart shot up like a rocket, then took a rapid nosedive. “What?”

“Yes,” said the lanky man. “I’ve seen ’em. They sleep right out there, don’t they?” The man pointed through the frame, at the Dunwoodys’ deserted bedroom. “But last night, they didn’t.”

“Oh,” said Olive. “But they haven’t come
in here,
have they?”

“No,” said the man. “No sirree. I’ve been alone in here for”—his eyes traveled around the painted glade, as if they were looking for a clue—“oh, I don’t know,” he finished, when they didn’t find one. “It’s been a long time.”

Olive nodded, wheeling back toward the frame. “Thank you,” she called over her shoulder.

“Wait!” The man darted forward, following her along the cobblestone path. “Do you have to leave again so soon?” He held out one long-fingered hand. “I’m Robert. Roberto the Magnificent, that is. Maybe you’ve heard of me?”

“No,” said Olive, with a quick shake of the man’s hand. The man’s
warm
hand. This man had once been alive. Placing her fingers on the bottom of the picture frame, she gave his narrow, eager face a closer look.

“How about Binkle and Rudd’s World-Wandering Carnival?”

“No,” said Olive again. “Sorry.”

“I was the main attraction.” The lanky man pointed at his chest. “Traveling magician. Watch
.
” The man made a little explosive gesture, and a bouquet of paper roses popped out of his sleeve. “For you, little lady,” he announced. The roses shot back up his sleeve before he could grab them.

“My tricks don’t work too well in here.” The man sighed. “And that’s all they were.
Tricks.
I told the old man, I said, ‘Look, I’m a sleight-of-hand artist. A carnival performer.’ But he said I should be grateful he was just confining me, not destroying me like he’d done to the others.”

Olive stared up into the magician’s face. “Was this ‘old man’ really tall and bony, with deep eyes and—”

“And a voice that sounds like he eats gravel for breakfast?” The magician nodded intently. “That’s him.”

“I know who he is,” said Olive. “He and—” A lump of something hard and icy formed at the back of her throat. “He and his granddaughter have taken my parents.” She whirled back toward the frame. “I’m sorry,” she called over her shoulder. “I need to keep looking.”

“Do you really have to go?” The man transferred his little book—
Cleverton’s Completely Confounding Card Tricks!
read the cover—from under one arm to the other, rooting in his jacket pockets. “I think I had a pack of cards in here . . .”

“I’m sorry,” said Olive again, with one leg already through the frame. “But I’ll come back and visit sometime.”

When Olive landed on her parents’ bedroom floor and glanced back up at the canvas, Roberto the Magnificent was walking slowly back toward the gazebo, his shoulders slumped and his head bowed.

Olive felt a little tug of guilt. But she had to get back to the search. There was no time to spare. She raced into the hallway. A few steps ahead of her, Horatio’s furry orange form dove through the frame around the moonlit forest and landed on the faded carpet. He looked up at Olive. “No sign of them in the forest,” he reported. “Morton’s neighbors haven’t seen them either, and Morton’s had them searching every house on the street.”

“Would you check Annabelle’s empty portrait?” Olive asked. “I’ll take the paintings in the blue room.”

With a nod, Horatio shot off like a fuzzy orange arrow, and Olive pounded along the hall to the blue bedroom, plunging into the painting of the grand ball.

“Olive!” shouted the dancers.

“Olive!” shouted the musicians in the orchestra.

“Olive!” shouted the conductor, still waving his baton even though the music had stopped. “Will you join us for a waltz?”

“I can’t,” panted Olive. “I’m looking for someone. You haven’t seen any
new
people in here, have you?”

The conductor blinked at Olive. “Is this a trick question?”

“I mean my mom and dad. I thought they might be here, hidden in the crowd.” Olive wove through the pairs of dancers. “Mom! Dad!”

“Mom!” shouted some of the dancers. “Dad!” shouted the others. Soon everybody in the painted ballroom was shouting “Mom! Dad! Mom! Dad!” but nobody was answering.

“Thank you,” Olive called, rushing back toward the frame, leaving the musicians happily twanging and plucking to the rhythm of their new chant.

The porter in the painted castle was delighted to see Olive too.

“Back for another tour?” he boomed as Olive skidded across the mossy drawbridge.

“I’m looking for my parents,” Olive puffed. “Have you seen them?”

The porter glanced around. “I know every inch of this castle,” he said, raising his lantern so that its beams fell over the dark stone floors and crumbling walls. High above, painted stars flecked the deep blue sky. “And I can tell you this: Your parents are not here.”

Olive met Horatio in the doorway of the blue bedroom.

“No luck,” said the cat.

“Me neither,” said Olive sadly. She pointed to the painting of a bowl of odd fruits hanging on the wall between two bedroom doors. “I suppose we’d better check in there.”

Horatio looked slightly startled. “I don’t think we’ll find your parents inside a bowl of fruit, Olive.”

“But we might find something
else,
” Olive argued. “Let’s look, just to be sure.”

Thanks to Ms. Teedlebaum’s art class, Olive knew that this kind of painting was called a still life. Olive’s class had painted still lifes of their own, using whatever objects they could extract from the clutter in Ms. Teedlebaum’s classroom, which had made for some very strange compositions. Olive’s own still life had included a rubber chicken, a pack of gum, and a toilet plunger. Aldous McMartin’s still life was far more beautiful, but no less strange. Inside the painting’s dark-walled room, Olive stared down into the bowl of fruit. Horatio perched on the table, following her movements with sharp green eyes.

“My parents aren’t here, obviously,” said Olive. “But maybe there’s a clue at the bottom of this bowl—a hidden key or a map or something.” She grabbed the wide silver dish and spilled the fruits across the table, but there was nothing hidden underneath. The moment she turned the bowl upright, the fruits flew back to their usual positions inside it. Olive bent lower, squinting at the bowl’s contents.