The Books of Elsewhere, Vol. 1: The Shadows, Page 2

  “Oof,” puffed Mrs. Dunwoody. “It’s really stuck. It must be glued to the wall or something . . . or over time, the wallpaper has bonded to the back of the canvas. Maybe if it got wet . . .” Mrs. Dunwoody trailed off, silently calculating various hypotheses.

  “Let’s worry about it tomorrow. For now,” she said, guiding Olive back into the bedroom, “let’s get you tucked in again.”

  Her mother tugged the covers up under Olive’s chin and smoothed the wrinkles around her feet. “Where’s Hershel?” she asked.

  “Right here,” said Olive, holding up the worn brown teddy bear.

  “Good. He’ll protect you,” said Mrs. Dunwoody, heading back toward the door. “But I’ll leave the hall light on, just in case.”

  The door clicked shut behind her mother. Olive lay very still, wide-awake, listening to her mother’s footsteps fade away down the hall. Then she swung her legs carefully out of bed, making the bedspread rustle as little as possible.

  Olive peeped out the door and looked down the hallway in both directions. Her parents were closed inside their bedroom. The hall lamp sent a soft glow over the thick carpet and made the polished wood along the walls glint like brass. She tiptoed out and stood in front of the painting. The row of houses cowered on their twilit street. Olive grabbed the frame. She pulled and pulled and pulled, but the painting wouldn’t move. It felt almost like the painting was part of the wall itself.

  Olive walked quietly along the hall toward the stairs, looking carefully at the other paintings. They seemed even stranger in the dim light than they had earlier in the day. One showed a big bowl of fruit, but they were fruits Olive had never seen in any grocery store. They were funnily shaped and strangely colored, and a few of them were sliced open to show bright pink or green centers with glistening seeds. Another painting depicted a rocky, treeless hill and a crumbling stone church, far away in the background. She hadn’t noticed it before, but when she squinted and leaned very close, Olive thought that she could make out the bumps and crosses of distant gravestones.

  Just to check, she yanked on the frame of each painting. None of them budged. She was just reaching the head of the stairs when something to the left caught her eye. In the big painting of the moonlight and the forest, something had changed.

  At first Olive thought that the light looked different, as if the painted moon itself had moved. But no—the moon hung just where it had before, behind the leafless trees. It was something about the shadows. Olive moved closer, watching. The shadows suddenly rippled and bent, and within the shadows, a pale splotch darted out of the undergrowth. Olive froze, staring at the white path. She blinked, rubbed her eyelids with her fingertips, and looked again. Yes—there it was. Something was moving inside the painting, a tiny white shape flitting between the silhouettes of the wiry trees. Olive held perfectly still. She didn’t even breathe. The tiny white shape made one more quick plunge toward the path, then dove back into the thorny black forest. And then the painting, too, was perfectly still.

  Olive bolted back to her bedroom, jumped into the bed, and yanked the covers over her face. Then she lay as still as she could and listened. The house’s creaks and groans were almost covered by the thumps of her own heart. But not quite.

  In every place that Olive’s family had lived, there had been other people nearby. On the other side of the apartment walls, neighbors moved around in their matching sets of rooms, talking, eating, going about their own lives. Even if Olive couldn’t hear them, even if she had rarely spoken to them, she knew they were there. Here, it was just Olive and her parents . . . and whatever it was that flitted through the shadows on that painted forest path.

  For a long time, Olive listened. The house moaned and whispered. Wind shushed across the window. Finally, curled in a very tiny ball, with Hershel standing guard on the pillow beside her, Olive fell asleep.

  3

  OLIVE WOKE UP rather late the next morning. Her father had already left for his office, but her mother was still in the kitchen, having a third or fourth cup of coffee and arguing with a science program on public television.

  “Good morning, sleepyhead,” Mrs. Dunwoody chirped as Olive stumbled in and pulled a stool close to the counter. “Do you want toast or cereal this morning?”

  “Cereal, please,” said Olive, yawning.

  Mrs. Dunwoody poured Olive’s brightly colored cereal into a bowl and set it on the countertop.

  “You remember that I have to go to campus this morning, don’t you?”

  Olive pretended to remember. She nodded.

  “Good. It will only be for a few hours, and I know you’re old enough to take care of yourself, but if you need anything, you can call Mrs. Nivens, who lives next door. Her number is right here by the phone. The only thing you have to do all morning is move the wet laundry from the washer to the dryer. Okay?”

  Olive choked on her Sugar-Puffy Kitten Bits.

  “In the basement? I don’t want to go down there by myself!”

  “Olive, really. It’s just a basement. You can turn all the lights on, and you only have to be down there for a minute.”

  “But Mom—”

  “Olive, if you are old enough to stay home alone, you are old enough to go into the basement alone.”

  Olive pouted and stirred the sludgy pink milk around in her cereal bowl.

  “Good girl. Well, I’m off. Have a good morning, sweetie.”

  Her mother gave her a coffee-scented kiss on the forehead and fluttered out of the house.

  With her mother gone, Olive decided to get the torture over with. After opening the door as wide as it would go, she stood in the basement doorway for a moment, looking down the rickety wooden stairs into the darkness. Then, like somebody jumping into an icy cold swimming pool, she took a deep breath and raced down.

  The basement of the old house was made mostly of stone, with some patches of packed dirt poking through, and other patches of crumbling cement trying to hide the dirt. The effect was like an ancient, stale birthday cake frosted by a blindfolded five-year-old.

  The basement lights were just bare lightbulbs dangling on chains from the ceiling. Swags of dusty cobwebs hung everywhere: in the corners, between the lightbulbs, over the old pantry shelves built along the walls.

  Olive turned on every single light before stuffing the wet laundry into the dryer. She was shoving in the last wet towel when the back of her neck started to prickle. She got this feeling whenever anyone was looking at her, and it had saved her from a lot of spitballs and snowballs. Olive whirled around. No one was there—no one she could see, anyway. Smacking the START button, she tore back toward the stairs, taking them two at a time, even though her legs weren’t quite long enough. Back in the safe sunlight of the kitchen, she slammed the basement door and took a deep breath. Then she realized that she had left all of the basement lights on.

  Olive knew that wasting electricity was a terrible thing. She had learned all about it in science class. It was almost as bad as wasting water or, worse, throwing a recyclable bottle in the trash. She couldn’t leave the basement lights on all day, with the environment already in such bad shape. She would have to go back down to turn them off, and then go back up the stairs in the dark. Olive gulped.

  Her parents had warned her not to let her imagination run away with her ever since she was three and had woken them night after night wailing about the sharks hiding under her bed. “Olive, honey,” her father had patiently explained, “when a shark is out of the water, it is crushed by the weight of its own body. A shark couldn’t survive under your bed.” Three-year-old Olive had nodded, and went on to imagine sharks slowly suffocating among the dust bunnies. But eleven-year-old Olive had a bit more faith in her imagination. Somehow, she felt sure that she hadn’t been alone in that basement. Someone had been watching her.

  With one hand on the wall, she edged down the stairs. The stones under her fingers were rough and cold. Still, having something to touch made her feel a teeny bit safer. She st
ood for a moment at the bottom of the stairs and looked around. Light from the bulbs brightened a few patches of crisscrossing wooden rafters against the high ceiling. Here and there, it lit up the uneven walls, making patterns in the stone. The dryer chuffed away in the corner. Its hum echoed through the empty space.

  Olive yanked the chain of the first lightbulb. Fresh shadows swooped in around her. She backed up to the second lightbulb. Click. More shadows flooded the room, leaving just the glow of the light over the stairs. Olive went up the steps backward this time, determined that whatever was down there in the dark couldn’t sneak up behind her. Reaching the top of the staircase, she switched off the final light. There!—something flickered in the corner. Something green and bright. Something that looked like a pair of eyes.

  Making a sound halfway between a squeak and a gasp, Olive skidded backward into the kitchen, slammed the basement door, and ran all the way up to her bedroom, where Hershel calmly waited on the pillows.

  4

  OLIVE HAD TROUBLE getting to sleep that night.

  For a while, she thought she was sleeping, but then she opened her eyes and saw that the minute column on the digital clock had only gone up by three. Olive sighed. She punched the pillows. She kicked her legs under the bedspread so that it billowed up like a parachute. She listened to the distant sound of her parents talking between the busy clicking of computer keys.

  Olive tried counting sheep, but she got lost around forty-two. Olive had never been good at counting. While learning to count to one hundred, she had always skipped the eighties completely. She had gone straight from seventy-nine to ninety while her parents had exchanged aggrieved looks above her head.

  “I give up,” she said to Hershel, holding him high in the air above her. His black bead eyes caught the dim sheen of streetlights through the windows. “I’m not even going to try to fall asleep. I’ll just lie here, wide-awake, all night long.”

  She turned on her side so she could look out of the window. There wasn’t much to see. The gauzy curtains stirred in a slight breeze, the branches of the willow tree swayed, and a gigantic orange cat pushed up the window frame and squeezed its body through.

  Olive sat up. The cat stood for a moment, sniffing at the air. Then it trotted soundlessly across the room, examining the furniture with careful solemnity.

  “Here, kitty, kitty,” whispered Olive.

  The cat ignored her. It moved away from the dresser toward the vanity, hopping up onto the cushioned chair.

  “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,” Olive whispered more loudly.

  The cat was now looking into the vanity mirror. Its reflected green eyes glanced at Olive for a split second. “That’s not my name,” it said. Then the cat looked back at its mirror image and ran one paw delicately over its nose. “Gorgeous,” it murmured.

  Half of Olive’s brain said, That cat just talked! The other half of Olive’s brain said stubbornly, No it didn’t. All Olive’s mouth said was, “What?”

  “I said, ‘That’s not my name,’” the cat repeated somewhat scornfully.

  “But everybody calls a cat that way,” said Olive.

  “What if I called you girly? ‘Here, girly, girly, girly.’ Rather insulting, isn’t it?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Olive. “I won’t do it again.”

  “Thank you.” The cat gave her a slight but gracious nod before turning its attention back to its own reflection.

  “What is your name?” Olive asked tentatively.

  The cat stood up and stretched itself. Its orange fur puffed and settled on its back, and its tail, as thick as a baseball bat, twitched above its head. “My name is Horatio,” he said with great dignity. “And you are?”

  “Olive Dunwoody. We just moved here.”

  “Yes, I know.” The cat turned his wide orange face toward Olive. Then he leaped down onto the rug. Olive half expected a cat that size to make a crash like a dropped bowling ball, but he landed with surprising lightness. The cat trotted to the end of Olive’s bed and sat, looking up at her. “I suppose you plan to stay for a while.”

  “Well—yes. My mom and dad said they want to stay here for good. That’s why they bought this house. We always lived in apartments before.”

  “Just because they bought this house doesn’t mean that you will stay here forever.” The cat’s eyes glinted up at her like bits of green cellophane. “A house doesn’t belong to someone just because it has been paid for. Houses are much trickier than that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, this house belongs to someone else. And that someone may not want you here.”

  Olive felt a bit miffed. Settling Hershel in her lap, she said, “Well, I don’t care. I don’t like it here anyway. This house is creepy and weird, and it has too many corners. And . . . it’s keeping secrets.”

  “You’ve noticed that, have you?” said the cat. “Very good. You’re brighter than I gave you credit for.”

  “Thank you,” said Olive uncertainly.

  The cat edged a bit closer to the bed. In a whisper, he said, “Keep your eyes open. Be on your guard. There is something that doesn’t want you here, and it will do its best to get rid of you.”

  “Get rid of me?”

  “Of all of you. As far as this house is concerned, you are intruders.” Horatio paused. “But don’t get too anxious. There’s very little you can do about it either way.”

  The cat turned with a swish of his huge tail and headed toward the window. “I’ll be keeping an eye on you,” he said. “Personally, I like seeing someone new in this place.” Squishing his orange bulk through the window, the cat stepped out onto the balcony and disappeared.

  Ripples of goose bumps scuttled from Olive’s toes all the way up to her scalp. She grabbed Hershel’s fuzzy body and squeezed it. “I’m dreaming, aren’t I?” she asked him. Hershel didn’t answer.

  In the distance, she heard her father knocking his toothbrush on the sink. The house creaked. A twig of the ash tree tapped softly against her window, again and again, like a small, patient hand.

  5

  FOR THE NEXT few days, Olive kept her eyes open.

  She kept them so wide open that they started to dry out. She even tried not to blink. But three days went by with nothing more unusual than Mr. Dunwoody tripping on the stairs and falling half a flight, and this was because he was reading at the time.

  Horatio the cat—whether he was a dream or not—stayed out of sight. Once, Olive thought she saw him looking down at her from an upstairs window while she took a bucket of compost out to the backyard, but she really wasn’t sure. If the house was truly trying to get rid of them, it seemed to be taking its time.

  Most days, Mr. and Mrs. Dunwoody stayed home, working in the library. Some days, one or both of them would go to campus to use the computers in the math lab or to work in their offices. Either way, Olive had most of the house to herself.

  And Olive was used to being on her own. Each time one of her parents took a job at a different college, Olive had to switch to a new school. She had done it three times already. For weeks or months she would be “the new girl”—the one who got lost on her way to the art room, who was wearing the wrong kind of laces in her tennis shoes, who always got picked last for teams. (Of course, if Olive had been able to catch, hit, or kick a ball, this might have been different.) Like Mr. and Mrs. Dunwoody always said, she would get used to things eventually, but it was getting harder and harder. Every time she switched to a new school, Olive tried to be like a chameleon. Silently she would observe the other children and change color until she disappeared into her new environment. But she was getting a bit tired of this. If she were really a chameleon, she would have picked a nice tree and stayed there, wearing her favorite shade of green and never having to turn pink or yellow again.

  Fortunately, the start of the school year was still more than two months away, and as far as making friends went, she didn’t need to worry. All the people on Linden Street looked just about as
old as their houses. There weren’t even any young trees in their yards. Not counting flowers, bugs, and a few pairs of socks, Olive guessed that she was the youngest thing on the whole street.

  Inside the big stone house, Olive wandered from room to room, staring at the paintings. She had tested every picture frame in the house, pushing and pulling on the paintings of dancing girls and crumbling stone castles and bowls of odd-colored fruit. All of them stuck to the walls as if they had been slathered with superglue. She had even tried to pry the painting of a romantic French couple off of the living room wall with a butter knife. All she achieved was a big gash in the wallpaper. Fortunately, Mr. and Mrs. Dunwoody didn’t notice.

  She explored the upstairs bedrooms. There were five bedrooms besides the two where Olive and her parents were sleeping. “Guest rooms,” Mrs. Dunwoody called them, even though the Dunwoodys never had overnight guests. Olive imagined that all of those rooms were already occupied. Guests were living in each one of them, but had always just gone out whenever Olive went in. It made the house seem friendlier.

  The first room, at the front of the house, was papered with pink roses on a pinker background. It smelled like mothballs and very old potpourri. There was a dusty wardrobe in the corner that still had a nightgown and slippers in it. There was also a great big painting of an old town somewhere in Italy or Greece, with crumbling pillars and half-formed walls, and a huge stone archway in the foreground, decorated with stern-faced soldiers three or four times the size of a human being. The other buildings showed their age, but that arch looked as solid and untouched as it must have looked when it was first carved. Olive peered down the arch’s shady tunnel. Beyond the far end, small white buildings crumbled away into the narrowing distance.