The Strangers (14 page)

T
HE PRICKLE IN
Olive’s neck flooded down her spine, collecting in an icy pool in the pit of her stomach. The candle trembled in her hands. Leopold and Horatio pressed steadyingly against her legs. Harvey jumped down from the picture frame and planted himself beside the other cats, glaring up.

“Well, Olive Dunwoody,” said Annabelle, in a voice like poisoned sugar. “Are you playing with magic again?” She stepped closer to Olive, and the candlelight cast its rippling sheen over her painted skin. Her golden eyes glimmered. “You’d better be careful, or you’ll burn your fingers.”

Olive took a small step backward, clutching the candle protectively in front of her body, and bumped into the squishy couch. The cats stayed as stony and silent as sculptures. “You’re trying to scare me,” she said, hoping she sounded less terrified than she felt. “But you can’t hurt us here. This whole house is surrounded by protective spells, and we have allies all over Linden Street, keeping watch.”

“This is
Elsewhere,
Olive,” said Annabelle. Her painted mouth formed a tiny smile. “Your neighbors can’t save you here.”

“Y-yes they can,” Olive stammered. “If you try anything, one of the cats will run for help. Rutherford will know that we need him before a message could get there anyway. Besides, now that Aldous is gone—from this house, I mean—you don’t have any power here. Not anymore.”

“We’ll see,” said Annabelle, her smile unwavering. She leaned down, bringing her face close to Olive’s. The pools of paint in her eyes were flat and cold. Olive swallowed. With a delicate puff, Annabelle blew the candle out. “First things first,” she said, in her sweetest kindergarten-teacher voice. “Why don’t you tell me what you think you’re doing by calling me here?”

Olive set the snuffed candle on the tea table, nearly knocking it over with her rubbery hands. “You have something I want,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “And if you don’t help me get it, we’ll leave you stuck in here. Just like you were before.”

“Is that so?” Annabelle looked mildly amused. “And just what would I need to do to escape this
terrifying
threat?”

“You—you need—” Olive faltered, staring at the gold in Annabelle’s painted eyes. “If you don’t want us to trap you here forever, you’ll have to give me my parents back.”

A strange expression flickered across Annabelle’s face, but it was gone again before Olive had the chance to identify it. “Two prisoners in exchange for one?” she asked. “That doesn’t sound like a fair exchange. In fact, I think it’s only fair that you lost your parents in the first place.” Her rosebud mouth snaked into a smile. “You removed my family from our home, and now we have removed yours.”

Olive glanced down at the cats, standing steady and silent around her. “It’s
our
home now,” she said. “And you haven’t removed
me.
”

“This house will never belong to you,” said Annabelle, as if Olive hadn’t spoken at all. “But as long as we are bargaining, why don’t we make it an even exchange?” She paused for a moment, tapping one finger thoughtfully against her chin. “Shall we say a pair of parents for a pair of spectacles?”

Olive sucked in a breath. “No!”

“Very well.” Annabelle gave a dainty shrug. “If you refuse to compromise, I won’t tell you anything at all.”

Olive looked down at the cats again. They kept quiet. “But . . . then you would be stuck here,” she said hesitantly.

“Is that what you really want, Olive?” Annabelle’s smile widened. “You want me back inside of this house, with all of your friends?” Her eyes flicked to the cats, glimmering. “Really, that’s quite generous of you. I would be much closer to what I
want. And you would be no closer to what
you
want.” Annabelle gave a little toss of her head. “It’s your choice, I suppose. If you don’t really want to learn what I know about your parents . . .”

“Wait,” said Olive, more urgently than she meant to. “You mean . . . if I
do
give you the spectacles, you would tell me exactly where my parents are?”

The cats’ eyes, six burning arrows, zoomed from Olive’s face to Annabelle’s.

“I think that’s fair,” said Annabelle. She bent down again, bringing her eyes in line with Olive’s. She dropped her voice to a compassionate murmur. “I’m sure that waiting and wondering about them has been terrible, hasn’t it, Olive?” Olive looked down, away from Annabelle, fighting the prickling pressure in her eyes. Annabelle’s gentle voice went on. “You just want to know if they are
alive—
if they are safe, if they are scared, if they are in pain. If there is any way you can put your family together again. Don’t you?” She waited. Olive pinched her tongue between her teeth, fighting the urge to answer. “I know you do,” Annabelle breathed. “So you will give me the spectacles, and in exchange, I will tell you everything I know about where to find your parents.”

Olive tugged the spectacles off her nose. They fell, caught by their ribbon, and bumped softly against her chest. “Wait . . .” she said again. “You’ll know that I’m handing you the spectacles. But how will I know that you’re telling me the truth?”

“An excellent question, Olive,” said Horatio, speaking up at last.

Annabelle ignored the cat. She arched her delicate eyebrows. “As it happens, I
was
going to tell you the truth, Olive. But if you like, why don’t I swear on something we both love?” She glanced around the painted room, her eyes sweeping coldly over the cats, gliding across the silk couch, the lacy windows, the row of photographs along the mantelpiece. “I swear by my house,” she said. “My beautiful house, which sheltered my family for generations, and which will continue to shelter us until its stones dissolve into sand—that I will tell you everything I know.”

Olive swallowed. Her trembling fingers reached to pull the spectacles’ ribbon from around her neck. Before she could tug it over her head, a black shape streaked in front of her.

“No, miss,” said Leopold. “We cannot let the spectacles fall into her possession.”

“But I need to know where my—”

“I understand, miss.” Leopold paused. “And that is why I will offer myself in their place.”

Horatio froze. Harvey made a small, startled noise.

Olive felt the breath whoosh out of her lungs. “Leopold,
no.
”

“It will be safer this way.” Leopold turned to face Annabelle, raising his head and puffing out his glossy black chest.

Annabelle’s eyes fastened on Leopold like two golden hooks. “You willingly enter my service?”

“I do,” the cat answered.

With the heel of her shoe, Annabelle scratched a line across the parlor’s pastel rug. Looking more than ever like a miniature panther, Leopold squared his shoulders, stepped over the already fading line, and seated himself at Annabelle’s side. His eyes met Olive’s for a fraction of a second, and then shifted away, staring with soldierly steadiness into the distance.

Olive had stopped breathing. She didn’t realize this until her chest began to ache and the room tilted dizzily to one side, like an egg sliding out of a greased pan. She swallowed a mouthful of air.

“And now,” said Annabelle, leaning closer to Olive’s gaping face, “I will tell you everything I know about where to find your parents.” She paused, letting the moment stretch.

Olive’s heart thumped against her shriveling lungs.

“I know
nothing,
” Annabelle said sweetly. “I do not know where they are. I don’t know where you’ll find them . . . if you can find them at all. You see,
I
am not fighting alone either. And you cannot get rid of my family, Olive. Not as long as you infest our home like the little pest that you are.” Annabelle straightened, smiling again. “Now, this is what I would call ‘fair.’ I reclaim a bit of what was already mine. You learn a bit of the truth.”

The shock and rage that shot through Olive were so thick, so heavy, that she couldn’t move. She could only stand and stare as Annabelle bent down and swept Leopold into her arms, holding the huge black cat securely against her chest. Leopold kept completely still. He did not look at Olive or anyone else.

“Good night, everyone,” said Annabelle. Then she stepped onto the sofa and climbed gracefully through the frame. There was a muted creak from the lavender room’s door, and she and Leopold were gone.

Olive managed to take a breath at last. It came back out in a roar. “We have to get him back!” she shouted, whirling to face the cats.

Harvey merely stared at her. When Horatio spoke, his voice was soft and hollow. “And how will we do that, Olive?” he asked. “With Leopold in her possession, Annabelle can come and go freely; she can leave or enter any painting . . .” Horatio stopped. His last words hung in the air, like smoke from a distant and terrible fire.

“This wasn’t how it was supposed to go!” Olive cried, digging her fingernails into her palms. “We were controlling
her
for once! I thought—if we just gave her the spectacles, we might—”

“No. Leopold was right,” Horatio cut her off. “With the spectacles, Annabelle would have been far more dangerous. Leopold has a will of his own. He may be able to resist her commands, and delay setting Aldous free.” Horatio hesitated. “For a while.”

“No.” Olive clenched her fists even harder. If she hadn’t known it would just pick itself up again, she would have kicked over the elegant little tea table, sending its china and silver smashing through the air. She wanted to destroy something that would last. “No,” she said again. “They can’t keep controlling us!
This isn’t their house!
”

Shoving the spectacles back onto her face, Olive leaped for the couch. She tumbled through the frame, banging her forehead on the chest of drawers and somersaulting onto the carpet. The door of the lavender room stood open.

Olive shot into the hall, but there was no trace of Leopold and Annabelle. The glimmering paintings, the dusty carpets, the heavy wooden doors sealing off the empty bedrooms all seemed to be watching her. Sneering at her. Annabelle’s words echoed inside her head:
This house will never belong to you . . .

Olive let out a furious breath. She pictured a wrecking ball smashing through the ancient walls, the stones tumbling down like a stack of toppled blocks. She imagined fire sweeping through the detritus, consuming every shred of what was left: the curtains, the carpets, the canvases on the walls, all of the McMartins’ things crumbling into ash, and then into nothing.

Scowling at the floor beneath her feet, Olive thundered down the stairs, running straight into the coatrack in a turtleneck that was climbing in the opposite direction.

“Olive,” rumbled Walter, “what was—”

“Walter!” Olive grabbed his baggy sleeve. “I need to talk to your aunt and uncle,” she panted, tightening her grip. “I need to talk to them
now
.”

S
INCE
H
ALLOWEEN NIGHT,
the Nivenses’ dining room had grown to look even less like a place to eat and even more like a mortician’s garage sale. On the sideboard, a bouquet of dead roses lay near a rusty handsaw. Several small, sharp tools, of the sort you might find in a dentist’s office, were arranged in the center of the table, next to a glossy black feather far too long to have come from any raven on earth.

Doctor Widdecombe paced slowly along the length of the room. Walter had settled on the sideboard, his bulbous eyes fixed on Olive. Delora sat very still at one end of the table, staring into the distance, with her mirror positioned before her. Olive sat—not very still at all—at the other end. She fumed in her chair, both knees bouncing with angry impatience. The words of her explanation seemed to hang in the air above them, like foul-smelling smoke.

“So, in spite of all of our advice, you summoned the portrait of Annabelle McMartin into the house,” said Doctor Widdecombe, whisking a jar filled with small, dirty cotton balls off of the end of the table. “Rolled cobwebs,” he explained peripherally. “They have powerful sleep-inducing properties.” He set the jar on a shelf, next to what looked like a giant hairball on a silver platter. “She took one of the familiars and escaped, once again. Is that correct?”

“I—I just couldn’t wait anymore,” Olive stammered, clenching her hands in her lap. Her skin prickled with a mixture of embarrassment and rage. “And it didn’t even matter. Annabelle doesn’t know where my parents are.”

“How do you know she doesn’t?” Delora asked softly. Her eyes fixed on something several feet above Olive’s head.

“Because—because she said so,” Olive answered, glancing up at the empty air.

“Didn’t you think she might have been lying to you?”

“She swore she wasn’t,” said Olive, her cheeks burning with a fresh wave of heat. “She swore on her family’s house that she was telling the truth.”

Doctor Widdecombe and Delora exchanged a look. Doctor Widdecombe paused in his pacing. “This
is
a dangerous turn of events,” he said. “The fact that she has one of the familiars—a living key to Elsewhere—changes everything about our own plans.”

“I know.” Olive swallowed. She looked from Delora’s wide silvery eyes to Doctor Widdecombe’s crinkly hazel ones. “And it’s my fault. But I’ll do anything to fix it, and to get rid of the McMartins for good.
Anything.
”

Doctor Widdecombe resumed his pacing. Light from the oil lamps flickered over his snug tweed jacket.

“As you heard Mrs. Dewey say, Olive,” he began, “the process that Delora and I suggested is directly opposed to the work that we, as members of the S.M.U.D.S., intend to do. She was right to discourage it.”

Olive felt her heart plummet to the base of her stomach and smash like a slushy snowball.

“It is true that this may be the only course—the
only
course,” Doctor Widdecombe repeated, with extra emphasis, “that would remove the power of the McMartins’ legacy from the house once and for all—but it requires dangerous magic. Is it worth it, one might ask, to fight evil with evil, darkness with darkness?”

“Mmm—I think—” Walter began timidly.

“This is what we, as powerful magicians, must ask ourselves,” Doctor Widdecombe plowed on, sweeping one hand toward Delora and the other toward his own straining coat buttons. Walter bowed his head.

“Byron,” murmured Delora. She leaned over the mirror, bending closer and closer until Olive thought she might fall straight into it. “I believe I can see the answer.”

Olive sat higher in her chair, craning over the table. All she could see in the mirror was the reflection of Delora’s own empty gray eyes.

“What is it, Aunt Delora?” Walter asked.

“Yes,” Delora breathed. “The answer is
yes
.”

• • •

In a tight line, laden with two big black bags, Delora, Doctor Widdecombe, Olive, and Walter slunk through the thinnest part of the lilac hedge and headed toward the back door of the old stone house. Above them, the sky paled with the last purple hues of sunset.

“Couldn’t I help? Or even—um—just watch?” Walter’s rumbling voice carried through the dimness.

“You
will
be helping, Walter,” said Doctor Widdecombe, shoving a lilac branch out of his wide way. “Distracting the remaining familiars is absolutely vital to our success.”

They stepped onto the back porch, leaving Walter standing dejectedly in the yard.

“Once you’ve gotten them out of the house, you can guard the front door,” Doctor Widdecombe added. “Don’t let anyone disturb us—especially Lydia Dewey. And remember that the rest of the house must be kept in perfect darkness. Don’t get frightened and turn on any lights.”

Walter nodded, but he kept silent.

He was still staring after them when Olive turned back to close the door, and something in his expression made Olive think of a huge, hook-beaked raptor about to swoop down on its prey. But then Walter turned, shuffling off across the twilit lawn, and he looked like a gangly water bird once again.

As she and Doctor Widdecombe and Delora hurried through the kitchen, switching off all the lights as they went, Olive heard a soft rattle, like a handful of pebbles hitting the glass of an upstairs window. Walter was causing the first distraction; at any moment, the cats would come rushing downstairs to see what had caused the sound, and Olive, Delora, and Doctor Widdecombe would be deep in the darkness of the basement, with the door closed securely behind them.

Olive stopped at the bottom of the creaking basement stairs, shivering slightly. The soft murmurs of Doctor Widdecombe and Delora drifted in the blackness before her. She heard scrapes and thumps and glassy tinkles, and then the sound of a match being struck, and one small, guttering flame burst out of the darkness several feet away. The flame split into two, and then split again, until Olive could make out Delora’s black-draped form in the center of a burning ring of candles.

Olive glanced into the basement’s darkest corner, where a pair of green eyes should have been reflecting the candlelight. Now there was only darkness. She was making the right choice, Olive reassured herself. The
only
choice. Delora and Doctor Widdecombe knew what they were doing, and they would help her to get rid of the McMartins—
all
of the McMartins—before they could hurt anyone else.

“Olive.” Delora beckoned her closer. “Come here.”

Picking up her legs very high, because setting herself on fire would be one unpleasant problem too many, Olive hopped over the circle of candles and approached the spot where Delora stood.

A wide metal bowl waited at their feet. Olive watched as Delora poured a stream of liquid from a glass bottle into its base. “Now,” said Delora, holding out a box of matches for Olive to take, “you must add the fire.”

Something about this moment—the anticipation, the bowl waiting below her—made Olive think of the moment in the painted forest when Annabelle had spilled Morton’s blood into the urn of Aldous’s ashes.
But this is completely different,
Olive told herself. They were getting rid of something, not
creating
it. And these were her allies, not her enemies.

Her hands shook slightly, but Olive managed to light a match and drop it into the bowl. There was a muted
whump
as the liquid caught fire. Delora stepped back, tossing a handful of strange-colored leaves and twigs into the flames. Before long, billows of gray smoke filled the basement, nestling like another layer of cobwebs between the dusty rafters. Every few seconds, Delora leaned over the bowl and tossed in another herb. Her shadow bent and stretched toward the surrounding walls, flickering over the ancient gravestones.

“Not much longer now,” said Doctor Widdecombe cheerily from outside the circle.

“You said this will destroy the root of the McMartins’ power, right?” Olive asked, looking at him through the ring of candlelight.

Doctor Widdecombe’s smiling features glowed back at her. “A spell’s exact effects can be difficult to predict, but that is indeed the desired outcome.”

“Olive, stay just where you are,” said Delora, before stepping over the circle of candles and gliding toward the wall. With ash from a filigreed silver jar, she left a swipe along the edge of each gravestone. Doctor Widdecombe’s eyes followed his wife, so full of happy anticipation that Delora might have been pulling cookies out of the oven instead of leaving fingerprints on long-dead witches’ graves. The thought of cookies led Olive back to Mrs. Dewey, but the guilt she knew she should feel seemed far-off and unimportant now. They were doing what needed to be done. Experts like Doctor Widdecombe and Delora wouldn’t steer her wrong.

When the last stone had been marked, Delora drifted toward the foot of the stairs and stopped at Doctor Widdecombe’s side. “Place your hands over the bowl, Olive,” she instructed.

Olive obeyed. The heat of the fire pressed up against her palms.

“You must concentrate as you cast the spell. Now, repeat after me—”

“Wait,” said Olive. “
Me?
But I’m not magical. I don’t—”

“We are well aware of your limitations, Olive,” said Doctor Widdecombe, with an encouraging smile. “You are only a conduit. A conductor of messages, as it were.”

“Isn’t Delora the one who’s supposed to be a messenger?” Olive asked, wavering. Her hands twitched nervously above the burning bowl.

“This house knows you. Its powers recognize you,” said Delora.

Olive glanced warily at the walls. She
did
have the feeling that each stone was watching her. She’d had that feeling ever since her family had moved in.

“Those on the other side will obey
you,
not me.” Delora’s voice was soft and calming. “It’s very simple,” she added. “You must only keep still, and repeat my words.”

You’re the one who suggested this,
Olive told herself.
Don’t you want to get rid of the McMartins’ powers for good? Won’t you at least
try
?

“. . . Okay,” Olive whispered.

Delora spoke slowly, making sure that Olive caught every word. “I call you from earth. From stone. From silence. From sleep.”

The fire had faded to embers, but Olive could still feel its warmth against her palms. “Um . . . I call you from earth. From stone . . .” The back of her neck began to prickle. By glancing out of the corners of her eyes, she could tell that there was nothing to see—nothing but the basement’s dimness, and the candlelight flickering over ash-smudged stones. “From silence. From sleep.”

“I call you,” Delora prompted, her soft voice rustling over the walls. “From dirt. From bone. To come forth. To obey.”

The prickle on Olive’s neck grew more insistent. “I call you from dirt. From bone. To come forth. To obey.”

The fire in the bowl was burning out. But the air went on filling with something thick and dark—something too thick and dark to be smoke. From the gravestones behind the dryer, black, weightless streams were beginning to pour. Olive sneaked a glance over her shoulder. From the other gravestones—from the names of
Athdar
and
Aillil
and
Angus
and
Anna
McMartin—
wisps of misty blackness rippled to the ground.

Olive’s arms started to tremble.

The black wisps thickened, and the darkness poured faster, until it was gushing from the graves, rising, twisting, slithering through the room. Doctor Widdecombe and Delora took a step back as the darkness rippled past them. It encircled the spot where Olive stood, keeping just outside the ring of candlelight.

“What is that?” Olive whispered.

Doctor Widdecombe’s voice came from somewhere beyond the pool of darkness. “That is all that is left of the McMartins.”

“You mean—this is—like ghosts?” Olive squeaked as a dark coil flowed uncomfortably close to the circle of candles.

“Creatures like the McMartins don’t have ‘ghosts,’” Doctor Widdecombe’s voice answered. “These are their shades. We see them now as they truly were.”

The darkness pouring from the stones thinned to a trickle, and then to a stop. Olive watched the last tumbling wisps flow to the center of the room, where a swamp of shadows, dense and drifting, pooled around the circle of light. Then, as Olive stared, the shadows began to split apart. Creatures with fins and tentacles and layered rows of teeth rose up amid the blackness. A spider the size of a pony picked its needle-thin legs out of the dark. Something that looked like a wolf, but with legs two times too long, licked its muzzle with a black tongue. Olive’s mind leaped back to the night when she’d faced what was no longer Aldous McMartin, but something made of his portrait, and his ashes, and Morton’s not-quite-blood. On that night, darkness had filled the entire house, concealing hosts of slithering, hissing things that had dragged their icy touch over her skin. A sick feeling—like the moment just after you lose your balance, but before your body hits the ground—washed through her.

Delora’s voice was repeating something that Olive couldn’t quite hear. Her heartbeat rumbled in her ears.

The crawling, lumbering, slithering darkness moved inward, toward the circle of light. Olive could make out dragging, leathery wings, an angler fish’s gaping jaws. The light of the candles fluttered over them, momentarily erasing bits of their black bodies, which faded and returned as the light slipped away.