The Strangers (3 page)

“You know how dangerous it will be, don’t you?” she asked, looking down into Morton’s moon-like face. “Elsewhere is full of things that can hurt you or trap you. And the outside is even worse. You’ll have to keep your skin covered up, so no one figures out the truth about you, and so you don’t get hurt by light, or fire, or—”

“I’m
already
trapped in here
,
” Morton interrupted. “And I’m sick of missing everything. School. And birthdays. And Halloweens.” He hopped to his feet. “I miss
everything.
”

Before Olive could reply, Morton charged toward the stoop and started kicking at the porch banisters, his bare feet smacking against the sharp-edged wood. The posts began to splinter.

“Morton!” Olive jumped up. “Don’t! You’ll hurt yourself!”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Morton, stopping. The banisters straightened themselves, splinters mending, paint sealing. “Everything just goes back to the way it was.” Morton looked down as a fresh red wound on his foot faded back into unbroken skin. “I don’t like it.”

Olive stood beside him, her hands shoved uselessly into her pockets. The folded flyer dug its corner into her palm.

“Morton,” she began, “what if there was a way for you to come out of Elsewhere for a little while?”

Morton’s head rose.

“Just for Halloween,” Olive added. “But you would miss one less thing.” She paused, chewing the inside of her lip. “Do you think you would like that?”

Morton looked up at her, narrowing his eyes. “Do
you
think I would like it?”

“Yes. I think so.”

Morton gave her a knowing nod. “I thought so too.”

• • •

Olive had gotten back out of the painting and down the stairs to the kitchen just in time to hear the front door bang.

“Hello, 12.02-year-old!” called Mr. Dunwoody from the entry.

“I believe it would be 12.0178, dear,” said Mrs. Dunwoody.

“I’m rounding up,” said Mr. Dunwoody, striding down the hall and through the kitchen door. He beamed at Olive, who was settled innocently at the table with her worn copy of
Alice in Wonderland
. “How many times would you say you’ve read that book?”

“I don’t know,” said Olive. “Maybe thirty?”

“Wrong!” sang Mr. Dunwoody. “Seventeen. I’ve kept track.”

Olive slipped a bookmark between the pages and watched her mother set a pot of water on the stovetop. “Um . . . Mom and Dad?” she began. “Remember how I said I wasn’t going to dress up and go out on Halloween this year?”

“Yes,” prompted her parents.

“Now I think I will
.
” Olive rubbed her fingers across
Alice in Wonderland
’s worn cloth cover. “But I need to come up with a costume, fast.”

“Let’s see.” Mr. Dunwoody adjusted his glasses. “I’ve got a simple one: You could cut arm and leg holes in a large box, and wear a plant on your head.”

“What?” said Olive.

“You would be a
square root.
Get it?”

“No,” said Olive.

“How about Hypatia?” Mrs. Dunwoody suggested, taking a box of pasta from the cabinet. “All you would need is a toga.”

“Who?” said Olive.

“Hypatia,” Mrs. Dunwoody repeated. “The first famous woman in mathematics? The last librarian of the library of Alexandria?”

“I don’t know,” said Olive. “That doesn’t sound very Halloween-y.”

“You don’t think so?” Mrs. Dunwoody’s eyebrows went up. “She was accused of being a witch and killed by an angry mob.”

“Oh,” said Olive as the word
witch
sent a gush of ice water through her stomach. “Maybe.”

Mrs. Dunwoody turned back to the stove. “Ninety-two . . .” she counted to herself, shaking a stream of pasta shells into the pot. “One hundred and ten. There we are.”

Mr. Dunwoody, who had been watching the noodles plop into the water, bolted suddenly upright. “Eureka!” he exclaimed. “You could be Archimedes, leaping out of the bath after discovering his principle of displacement! You wouldn’t need a costume at all!” Mr. Dunwoody tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Of course, it might be wiser—if more inaccurate—to wear a towel.”

“That might be a little
too
scary,” said Olive.

“I think it’s a wonderful suggestion, darling,” said Mrs. Dunwoody, patting her husband’s shoulder. “Perhaps you should use it yourself.”

Olive pictured her father opening the door to a cluster of trick-or-treaters while wearing this particular Halloween costume. If the house itself didn’t scare them away, Mr. Dunwoody in nothing but a bath towel probably would.

“Thank you,” she said, before her parents could supply any more ideas. “I’ll think of something.”

Olive hoped she was right. She had to think of something, for Morton’s sake. And she had to think fast.

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
Olive tore up the stairs with two strawberry waffles still bouncing in her stomach. If she was going to leave the house after dark, she was going to bring protection along—which meant she had a lot of work to do in very little time.

She raced down the hall into the pink bedroom. The sky outside was too gray and dim to send the usual scattering of sunny spots through the curtains, but the air held its familiar scent of mothballs and dust, along with a whiff of dried flower petals so faint that it was almost an illusion.

Olive placed the spectacles on her nose and headed for the room’s single large painting: an ancient town somewhere in Italy or Greece, with a huge stone archway guarded by two towering stone soldiers. Olive dove toward the painted arch, feeling the surface of the canvas wriggle around her as she plunged into the tiny entryway beyond.

There was no light here; nothing but the faintly glowing band that outlined the edges of a door. Olive lunged through the darkness, grasping the doorknob. The door swung open before her with a low, heavy groan, like a very large creature turning over in its sleep.

A narrow flight of wooden stairs angled upward from the doorway. Olive climbed them gingerly, avoiding the papery corpses of wasps and dehydrated flies that clustered in the corners. At the top of the staircase, Olive paused, blinking around at the cluttered attic. A few streaks of dusty daylight fell through the round windows, scattering shadows everywhere. Antique furniture draped in ghostly white sheets loomed against the walls. Stacks of old steamer trunks towered toward the rafters. Silent clocks, unframed canvases, dead telephones, and one small, battered cannon glinted at Olive from the corners. If there was anywhere in the old stone house to find an interesting Halloween costume, it was here.

Olive crept toward the center of the room, where Aldous McMartin’s easel stood in its patch of pale sun. Olive had brought the easel back to its place after Annabelle had fled with Aldous’s last painting, and now she noticed that the attic’s other furnishings seemed almost to lean away from it, as if it were some strange, potentially dangerous animal. Its shelf was bare now, its drop cloth gone—and still the sight of the easel, patiently waiting, made the back of Olive’s neck start to prickle. The prickle grew into a chill that stiffened the strands of her hair.

Olive knew what this meant.
She was being watched.

She whirled around to find herself staring down the length of a cardboard tube, straight into one glittering green eye.

“Ahoy there, matey,” growled the cat at the other end of the tube. “I spotted ye through my spyglass. Not much escapes the single eye of wily Captain Blackpaw!” The cat leaped away from the hat rack where his “spyglass” was braced, and Olive caught a glimpse of a tiny leather eyepatch and a splotchily colored tail before he bounded off into the rafters.

“Ahoy, Captain,” Olive called toward the ceiling. “How are things on board ship?”

“Smooth sailing,” snarled Harvey’s voice from above. “Ye know the old adage: ‘Red sky at night: A sailor’s stoplight. Green sky at dawn: Sailor, sail on!’”

“Green
sky?” Olive repeated.

Harvey executed a tumbling leap from one rafter to another. “Prepare to set sail for the islands!” he commanded his imaginary crew. “All paws on deck!”

“Um . . . Harvey? Or Captain Blackpaw?” Olive began, watching the cat dive-bomb a dusty armchair and spring back toward the beams. “I came to ask you something.”

“Ask away! Ha-HA!” roared Harvey, scampering across the shoulders of an old sewing dummy.

“Today is Halloween. And I’m going to take Morton out, in disguise, so he doesn’t have to miss it.” Harvey paused, aiming his one un-patched eye in Olive’s direction. “Rutherford is coming along. Leopold and Horatio said they would escort us, so I have to make their costumes too,” Olive went on. “And I wondered—will you come with us? In a costume, I mean?”

Harvey lost his footing on the sewing dummy. He hit the attic floor with a thump. A moment later, his face reappeared, inching out from beneath a velvet love seat.

“
Will
I?” he whispered.

“That’s what I just asked you.”

Harvey’s eyes were glazed. “That’s what you just asked me.”

Olive watched Harvey’s gaze drift worshipfully toward the rafters, as if all the heroes of history and literature were gathered there in invisible feline form.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” said Olive. “I’m in a big hurry already, so I hope you won’t mind making your own costume. Will you?”

“
Will
I?” Harvey echoed, still staring at the ceiling.

“Good,” said Olive.

While Harvey disappeared back into the clutter, Olive rushed toward the nearest corner and tore into a stack of boxes. The first three were filled with a set of fancy china. In the fourth, she found a cache of spidery lace doilies, and in the fifth, she uncovered a stack of old tablecloths, some thick and silky, some as delicate as tissue paper. An idea began to flicker in Olive’s mind.

As she hauled the tablecloths out of the box, she couldn’t help but picture them draped across the dining table two floors below, with the McMartin family gathered all around. McMartin hands had brushed this lacy tablecloth. These linen napkins had lain in McMartin laps. As though they were used tissues instead of fancy fabrics, Olive dumped the cloths into a heap on the floor. They wouldn’t remind her of the McMartins when she was done with them.

In one small metal trunk, she uncovered a pair of old driving goggles—the kind people wore when twenty-five miles per hour seemed astonishingly fast—and a pair of leather driving gloves. Olive wriggled her hands into the gloves. She placed the goggles on top of her head. Then she hurried across the floor to look into one of the mirrors, still arranged in the circle where she had left them months ago. Looking back at her from the dusty reflection was a gangly girl in spectacles, with what looked like a pair of bulbous eyes poking out of the top of her head, and two big, brown, claw-like hands.

“Rraaahhhrrr,” she growled at the mirror. And, all at once, Olive knew just what she was going to be for Halloween.

With an armload of tablecloths, several wire hangers, some curtain fringe, the goggles and gloves, and an old silk sash, Olive ran back down the attic stairs through the painting and along the hall to her own bedroom. There, she hunkered down for several hours of secret and serious work.

• • •

At precisely 4:00 that afternoon, there was a knock at the front door of the old stone house.

Olive skidded along the slippery wood of the downstairs hall. She stood on her toes to peer through the window. Two brown eyes, blurred by a pair of smudgy glasses, stared back at her.

Olive gave her wire-hanger wings a last tweak. She pulled down the driving goggles, which she had painted with wisps of flame. Then she yanked open the door.

“Grrraaaawwwwlllaallllwww!” she roared.

Rutherford blinked calmly back at her. “Good afternoon.”

Olive pushed the goggles onto her forehead. Rutherford was dressed in spotless beige slacks and a tweed jacket, with a bow tie knotted snugly under his chin. It was a change from his usual uniform of wrinkly dragon T-shirts, but it certainly didn’t make Olive think of Halloween.

“Why aren’t you in a costume?” she asked.

“I
am,
” said Rutherford. “I’m a medieval historian who teaches at a university, obviously. I’m wearing a
blazer.
”

“Oh,” said Olive.

“And what are you?” Rutherford asked as Olive stepped aside to let him into the hall.

“I’m a jabberwocky. See?” Olive held up her hands in the old leather gloves, with wooden tent pegs poking through the knuckles. “The claws. The wings.” She pointed one tent peg at her goggles. “The eyes of flame.”

“And the brown sweat suit with painted squiggles?”

“They’re supposed to look like scales,” said Olive, shutting the front door. A draft of cool air, spiced by the scent of burning leaves, wafted along the hallway.

“And what is
he
supposed to be?” asked Rutherford as a furry green blob tried to slink inconspicuously up the staircase.

Olive grabbed Horatio before he could skulk out of sight. “He said he didn’t care what he was, so to go with my costume, I made him a mome rath.” She adjusted the plastic pig snout tied around the cat’s face. “Isn’t he perfect?”

Above the snout, Horatio gave Olive a look that said he would like to see a long, slow bout of food poisoning inflicted on anyone who had ever dressed up her cats for Halloween.

“And wait until you see the others,” Olive whispered, leading Rutherford across the entryway. “I made Leopold’s costume just the way he requested it. Harvey’s making something for himself. But the
surprise
turned out best of all.” She glanced along the hallway toward the kitchen, where Mr. and Mrs. Dunwoody were cheerfully dividing their total number of candies among the estimated total of trick-or-treaters. “Let’s get them while my parents are still busy. Come on.”

Followed by a reluctant Horatio, Olive and Rutherford hustled up to the pink bedroom.

Olive put on the spectacles and Rutherford held Horatio’s green tail as they climbed through the picture frame and entered the attic.

A cat the size and color of a miniature panther stood waiting for them at the top of the narrow wooden staircase.

“Good evening, miss,” said the cat, with a dignified bow. “Good evening, sir.”

“Good evening, Leopold,” said Rutherford. “From the medals and sash, I would guess that you are portraying a high-ranking military officer, but I am not certain which one.”

Leopold puffed out his glossy black chest. “The Duke of Wellington,” he replied, in his deepest voice. “At your service.”

“Ah! Fascinating, although the Napoleonic Wars are beyond my areas of expertise,” said Rutherford, beginning to jiggle excitedly from foot to foot. “My knowledge of anything beyond the sixteenth century is fairly spotty, although I’m an expert on the Middle Ages in Western Europe—Britain and France in particular.”

“Where is Harvey?” Olive asked, before Rutherford could go on. “Is he ready?”

“I’m sure he’s planning his grand entrance,” said Horatio.

On cue, a lumpy shape in a hooded robe shuffled out onto the rafters. It paused beneath a cluster of empty cans that dangled like church bells from the ceiling. With a jump, it grasped the rope that dangled between the cans, setting off a cacophonous clanking that grew louder and louder as it swung back and forth.

“Sanctuary!” the lump howled. “Sanctuary!”

“What is
that?
” Olive asked.

Horatio let out a sigh. “The Hunchcat of Notre Dame, naturally.”

Harvey plummeted from the rope to the floor and lumbered toward the others, squinting one eye and dragging one leg. He gave Olive a clumsy bow. “Mademoiselle,” he mumbled.

“Come along, Quasimodo,” said Horatio, turning back toward the stairs with a sweep of his green tail. “If we want to return home before it gets too dark, we had better be on our way.”

The upstairs hallway was quiet, with only the distant murmur of Mr. and Mrs. Dunwoody’s voices floating up from below. The silvery lake and the moonlit forest flickered softly in their canvases. All along the hall, glints traveled over the gilded frames, brightening and fading away.

“All clear, miss,” Leopold murmured as Olive straightened the spectacles on her nose.

They climbed swiftly into the painting of Linden Street.

“Fascinating,” Rutherford whispered as they hurried up the row of deserted front yards. “There’s Mr. Fergus’s house. That side must have been entirely remodeled since this painting was completed. And there’s the Butlers’! I wonder why—” Rutherford’s toe bumped an acorn. It skittered a few paces along the deserted street before wheeling back again.
“Fascinating!”
Rutherford interrupted himself. “I wonder if that acorn would return to its original spot at the same speed no matter how hard I kicked it!”

Rutherford was still kicking at acorns when they reached the walkway to the tall gray house. On the porch, a boy in a white nightshirt stood with his arms folded, scowling down at them.

“Happy Halloween, Morton!” called Olive.

“You look funny,” said Morton.

“It’s my costume.” Olive approached the porch steps. “We’re all in costumes.”

Morton’s frown deepened. “What is
that
supposed to be?” he asked, nodding toward Horatio.

Muttering something inaudible, Horatio attempted to hide himself in a patch of long grass.

“I’m a jabberwocky, so he’s a mome rath,” said Olive. “See his snout?”

Morton’s round, pale face turned back toward Olive. “That’s not very scary,” he said. “I thought you were supposed to look scary for Halloween.”

“
You’re
going to be the scary one,” said Olive. She pulled Morton’s costume from its hiding spot beneath her sweatshirt.

Layers of the McMartins’ ancient tablecloths fluttered eerily toward the ground. The delicate sheets were stitched together at the top and tattered at the bottom. Between the layers, Olive had dabbed tiny pictures in glow-in-the-dark paint, so that skeletons and jack-o’-lanterns and monstrous faces flickered through the fabric, like lanterns in a lacy mist.

“Golly,” Morton breathed. He reached out one finger to touch the costume. “How does it glow like that?”

“I used glow-in-the-dark paint,” said Olive, smiling proudly. “And if you have this costume covering you up, you can come out with us and do everything we do. You can go trick-or-treating, and walk around the neighborhood, and come to our school carnival, and nobody will notice a thing.”

Morton’s eyebrows rose. He gave the costume another careful poke.

“Here,” said Olive. “I’ll help you put it on.”

“That is very clever,” said Rutherford as Olive made Morton’s eyes meet up with his costume’s eyeholes. “It will keep your painted skin safe from both natural and artificial light, on top of disguising you very effectively. No one will notice how strange you look up close.”