Still Life

  They all looked up as the front door slammed.

  “Olive!” said Mary, swiveling around on the piano stool. “How nice to have a visitor!”

  “Come sing with us!” said Morton.

  “We could use another treble voice,” Harold agreed. “Do you know ‘Oh, I Could Pull a Trolley in my Jolly Holley Motor Car’?”

  “Um . . .” said Olive.

  “Or how about, ‘She May Be Homely, but her Apple Pie’s a Beaut’?”

  “What? No,” said Olive. “Do you know what’s going on?”

  “Going on?” Mary echoed.

  “How did he get all of us into the painting?”

  The Nivenses looked perplexed.

  “Morton,” said Olive desperately, “you’ve been here. You were stuck here for decades, remember? You must recognize all of this!”

  “Of course I recognize it.” Morton folded his skinny arms. “It’s my house.”

  “But it’s different,” said Olive. “The stone house just appeared in the spot that was empty before, and—”

  “The stone house?” Mary’s eyebrows drew gently together. “It’s always stood right next door, Olive.”

  Harold gazed out the window, at the twilit slope of Linden Street. “Yes,” he said, nodding. “Everything looks shipshape to me.”

  “Morton.” Olive stared into his eyes. “We’re Elsewhere. I don’t have the spectacles, and Aldous is somewhere nearby, and—”

  Morton’s cloudy eyes suddenly focused. “Shh!” he hissed. “Don’t say his name!”

  “Let’s all change the subject, shall we?” Mary turned back to the keyboard. “Why don’t we sing—”

  “‘Flapjacks in My Belly and a Song in My Heart’?” suggested Harold.

  “That’s just what I was about to say!”

  Mary pounded the piano. Morton and Harold began to sing.

  Feeling dizzier than ever, Olive staggered back out of the house, through the slamming front door.

  She paused beside the lilac hedge. The stone house loomed above her, as solid and sudden as a wall of rock rolled downhill by an avalanche. She didn’t want to venture inside of it alone, without any friends or neighbors or cats to help her find another way out.

  But perhaps the cats were already inside, waiting. Perhaps there was something else that she was meant to find. Whatever it was, Olive could feel the house drawing her forward.

  The air turned cold as she climbed slowly up the porch steps. Ferns rustled in their hanging baskets. Ivy whispered against the windows.

  The doorknob was shinier than Olive remembered. When she turned it and pushed the door open, the hinges were oddly quiet—just like Olive’s footsteps when she stepped across the threshold into the long, dim hallway.

  Olive looked around. There was something wrong with the house. Every trace of the Dunwoodys had vanished: the family photographs, the math books, the winter coats and purple backpacks. But that wasn’t all. Each surface and line looked vaguer, blurrier, as though the interior had been created with hurried brushstrokes. The polished banister was a streak of brown. The wood panels of the walls were one solid, oily line. The paintings on the walls were mere suggestions of paintings, blots of color closed inside the ghosts of golden frames. The whole interior was like something seen through a frost-covered window, or through a pair of very bleary spectacles. Instinctively, Olive touched the empty spot around her neck. Nothing here felt real at all.

  Except . . .

  . . . Except for the whisper of pencils that came from the library.

  Olive edged between the streaked wooden doors.

  Mr. and Mrs. Dunwoody sat at their desks, or at the streaks of paint that looked vaguely like their desks, their heads bowed over stacks of paper. Their computers had vanished. Mr. Dunwoody’s special high-efficiency reading lamp was gone, and the chandelier that dangled above them was dimmer and simpler than it had been before, with just a few yellow bulbs burning among its brass scrolls.

  A cold, sloshing lake filled Olive’s stomach. When she stepped forward, its icy weight came with her.

  “Mom?” she called, in a very small voice.

  Mrs. Dunwoody glanced up. “Oh, hello, Olive. Having a good day?” Her head snapped back down.

  Olive inched across the blurry rugs. “Not really.”

  Mrs. Dunwoody didn’t reply. Neither of her parents looked up as Olive moved closer. The book-lined walls glimmered around them, like the mother-of-pearl inside a sealed shell.

  Olive stopped beside her father’s desk. He was grading a huge stack of papers. He took the topmost sheet, scribbled a mark that immediately vanished, and set the paper aside. It glided straight back to the top of the stack.

  “Dad?” Olive whispered.

  Mr. Dunwoody went on scribbling, turning, and scribbling again.

  “Dad?”

  This time Mr. Dunwoody paused. “Oh, hello, Olive,” he said. “How was school?”

  Olive looked hard into her father’s face. His eyes seemed faded, as if the irises had been dusted with silvery powder. His skin still looked alive; there were no streaks or swirls of paint on his hands. But Olive didn’t know how much longer this would last; she could have been lying on the front lawn for minutes or hours.

  “Dad,” said Olive as Mr. Dunwoody’s eyes wandered back to his work. “Dad, we have to get out of here.”

  “Certainly, Olive,” her father answered. He scribbled on the top paper once more. “Just as soon as I finish grading these tests.”

  A soft creak came from above. Her parents didn’t seem to hear it, but Olive’s entire body stiffened. There was someone upstairs.

  She backed out of the library. With one hand on the streak of paint that served as a banister, she climbed cautiously up the steps.

  The upper floor was even dimmer than the one below. Olive swept one hand across the chilly wall, but there were no light switches. The sconces were missing too. Where the still life usually hung, she could make out the outline of a frame. Olive touched the muddy blur inside. It was smooth, and solid, and very, very cold.

  There was another creak overhead. Keeping one hand pressed to the wall, Olive moved along the upper hallway and through the door of the very last bedroom.

  By the twilight that breathed through the foggy curtains, she could see that the pink room had changed. The walls were darker and streaked now. All the furnishings were gone. And where the picture of the ancient Roman town should have been, there was only a door.

  An open door.

  Its warped black wood swung outward, waiting, like a beckoning hand.

  Olive tiptoed through it.

  She paused in the dark attic entryway, blinking and listening. From above came a soft, whispering sound, almost like a human voice. Olive recognized it. It was the sound of a moving paintbrush. Shakily, she climbed the narrow stairs.

  The attic was strangely empty. The piles of old luggage and jumbled antiques had disappeared—or had never appeared to begin with. Its angled walls were only half complete. Streaks of paint hung in midair. In the gaps where the rest of the walls should have been, patches of blue-black night sky peered through.

  The rest of the attic was so dim that the sky seemed bright by comparison. Olive squinted, trying to pinpoint the source of the whispering sound, but the blurry darkness gave no clues.

  She was just about to edge away from the staircase when a deep, stony voice said, “Stop.”

  Olive froze.

  “Do not move.”

  Before Olive could decide whether to obey or not, something damp and slick moved around her wrist. It tightened like a coiling snake. Olive gasped. Through the dimness, she saw that a dense black rope had knotted itself around her wrist—a rope that hung from the rafters, made of swiftly drying paint. She tugged at it with her free hand, but the strands tightened again the
second she’d loosened them.

  The floor creaked. Something tall and dark and bony peeled away from the shadows beside her. Olive struggled, but the rope held tight. She could only cower in place as Aldous McMartin stepped nearer, dabbing his brush against a palette of glinting paint.

  He was so tall, his head nearly brushed the unfinished ceiling. His face was a smear of shadows and crags. Even in the darkness, his eyes gave off a yellowish light, like those of a huge, predatory cat.

  Even though she’d known she might find him here, the sight of the old man made Olive’s skin swarm with goose bumps. Her memory shot back to the moment, months before, when she had faced Aldous in the icy black attic of the real house. Here, the attic was cool and misty, and the warped, unfinished walls made everything feel like a horrible dream.

  “Olive Dunwoody,” Aldous said. His voice made the skin of Olive’s neck crawl. “You may be irritating . . . infuriating, even . . . but at least you are predictable.”

  Olive forced down the fluttering panic that threatened to block her throat. “What do you mean?”

  Aldous twirled the brush through a pool of paint. “I never have to pursue you. You walk straight into my traps.” On the rafter above Olive’s head, he painted the first silvery strands of a spiderweb. “Dressed as a security guard, I watched you make your visits to the museum. There I reclaimed my own spectacles and used them to enter my latest portrait: one of a certain museum volunteer named Florence Teedlebaum. In that disguise, I was welcomed into your home . . . My home, that is.” Aldous’s brush drew another thread on the air. “And now, you come to me once again. You clomp up these steps to confront me in my own house, in my own world.” Aldous gave an amused little snort. “There are all kinds of creatures in the world, Olive Dunwoody. But it is the clever, patient ones who win.” Aldous dipped his brush in a darker color and returned to the web. In its center, a large black spider began to form.

  “But—how?” Olive kept her eyes on the growing spider. One angular leg, now two, now three, jutted from the tip of Aldous’s brush. “How did you get everybody in here, without them even realizing? Did you use a Calling Candle, or—”

  “There was no need,” Aldous interrupted. “I had help.”

  Olive felt as though she’d plunged into the bog once again. A cold, hopeless fear surrounded her. He must have forced someone to turn on her. “Who?” she whispered. “Who was it?”

  The pale light from the sky illuminated Aldous’s face as he turned to dip his brush. It was so stiff and still, it could have been a mask—or the face of something already long dead. “Perhaps someone you thought was your ally does not want what you want at all,” he said. “It would not be the first time, would it, Olive Dunwoody?”

  The last flicker of warmth in Olive’s heart sputtered out. Not the cats, she thought. Not Horatio. Please.

  Aldous’s brush made a final stroke. The spider twitched to life.

  “I have such respect for the spider,” Aldous murmured. “An artist among predators.”

  On its long, spiky legs, the spider crawled across the web. It was nearly the size of a rat. Its body was sleek and pointed. Glints of light shivered in the facets of its eyes.

  Olive dragged her own eyes away. “What are you going to do?”

  Aldous dipped his paintbrush in a paler color. He drew a fine line through the air. “Your neighbors will remain here for good. That’s what Elsewhere is for, after all. It is just like a spider’s web. A perfect creation. A beautiful trap. A home that protects itself from intruders. A place for dead things to stay, as long as the spider collects them.”

  Aldous painted one more delicate downward stroke, ending right in front of Olive’s face. The spider crawled down it. There it hung, so close that Olive’s breath made the thread tremble. One of its six-jointed legs whispered over her cheek like a loose hair. “Are you fond of spiders, Olive Dunwoody?”

  Olive was shaking too hard to squeeze out an answer, but Aldous seemed satisfied by the look on her face.

  “A terribly misunderstood creature,” the old man added. “The spider is not evil. It only does what it must do to survive. It feeds itself, it keeps its home and family safe.” His yellow eyes stared into Olive’s. “It cleanses the world of a few irritating, over-populous insects in the meantime.”

  “But—” said Olive. “But you—”

  The puff of her breath set the spider in motion. It swung nearer, another needle-thin leg brushing her skin. Olive shuddered.

  Aldous brought his face close to Olive’s. The spider twisted on its thread between them.

  “You still see yourself as the heroine.” Aldous’s voice was soft. “And in this picture, I am the villain. But let us reverse the image for a moment. Imagine that someone invades your home—the home that you built yourself, where all that remained of your family lived and died. Imagine that this person plays with and breaks your precious possessions. She damages your life’s work. She turns your associates against you.” Aldous’s voice grew deeper. “She desecrates your family’s graves. She destroys the person you loved most in the world. Now, tell me, Olive Dunwoody . . .” Aldous drew so close that Olive could see the yellow flecks of paint that made up his eyes. “. . . Who is the villain?”

  “But—I was—” Olive stammered. “I was trying to make things better.”

  “For whom?” Aldous asked. The spider swung close again, and Olive felt one of its legs grasp for a foothold on her cheekbone. “Who have you helped?”

  Olive took a breath that sounded like a sob. “I helped Morton.”

  “Morton is where he was to begin with,” said Aldous. “Yes, you reunited him with his family—apart from the sister you helped to incinerate, of course . . .”

  “That wasn’t my fault!” Olive protested.

  “Is that so?” Aldous’s voice was taunting now. “Tell me how you did not spy on her, sneak into her home, and try to steal her possessions?”

  Olive’s mouth fell open, but nothing came out.

  “The troublesome Nivenses are right back where I put them. Safe inside the web.” Aldous stared into her eyes. “Try again, Olive. Who have you helped? Whose life have you made better?”

  “The cats,” said Olive, wishing her voice sounded steadier. “You hurt them. You made them do things they didn’t want to do.” A thin flash of hope streaked through her mind. “You’ve probably trapped them somewhere right now, so they can’t come and help me!”

  Aldous’s eyebrows rose. “You have hurt and trapped them yourself,” he said. “I swear to you, I have done nothing to the cats. Right now, they are hiding, waiting to see who emerges from this frame. When they see that I am master of this house again, their loyalties will return. It will be as though you were never here at all.”

  A choked sob escaped from Olive’s mouth. “My parents . . .” she said weakly.

  “You think you have made their lives better?” Aldous’s sunken eyes shimmered as he shook his head. “Your parents are trapped here because of you. If you had never come stumbling into my secrets, your parents would still be alive tomorrow.”

  Aldous rose to his full height again. Olive had to tilt her head back to stare up at him, a black silhouette against the strips of night sky.

  “Their lives would have been better had you never entered them in the first place,” he went on. “They have each other, their shared work, their shared talents. You are barely part of their lives at all. And I know just what they feel. I felt it myself, for my only child. Albert.” Aldous almost spat the name. “He was a traitor. A thing of disappointment, humiliation, disgust. In the end, I couldn’t stand the sight of him. I had to remove him myself.” Aldous’s voice rasped like iron. “If someone had ripped him from my path, as I am about to do for your parents, believe me, I would have been grateful.”

  Olive yanked at the rope around her wrist until her skin burned. It was no
use.

  “I could simply keep you here,” said Aldous, very softly. “Tied to the rafters, alone. Stuck forever in my trap. But I will not.” He stepped closer. “Because I do not want you in my home. Not in this world or in any other.” He bent down again, lifting the spider gently in one palm and setting it back in the heart of its web. “And when I destroy you, it will mean less to the world than the crushing of one little spider.”

  Olive felt her lips start to tremble. She bit the inside of her cheek, forcing the tears backward. “That’s not true.”

  Aldous turned away. With two quick brushstrokes, he formed the outlines of a simple table to set down his palette and brush. Then he opened his empty hands. All the light that remained in the attic—the glimmers of fresh paint, the misty twilight slipping through the unfinished walls—dripped downward like melting wax. Rivulets of light ran into Aldous’s cupped palms from every direction. The attic turned black. Above his palms, a poisonous green fire began to flicker.

  “Let us see who comes to help you now,” he said.

  The streak of green fire seared through the attic and landed on Olive’s tied hand.

  In the first instant, there was only a crinkling, tickling warmth. Olive stared at the ball of fire, wondering why she didn’t feel anything worse. . . until an instant later, when the flame had already dug into her skin, and the pain opened like a burst balloon.

  Olive screamed. She tried to jerk her hand away from the burning ball, but the rope held tight. Aldous watched her writhe, his face as calm as if she were a piece of meat in a skillet.

  He was right, Olive realized, through the terror and the pain. No one was coming to save her. They were too far away, or too muddled by magic. Or maybe everything Aldous said was true. Maybe they didn’t even want her to be saved. Maybe she hadn’t helped anyone at all. A fresh spike of pain reached all the way to her heart.

  But I tried, she thought. I tried so hard.

  And then another thought floated up from the very back of her mind. It was foggy at first, and it seemed to shift from her very first glimpse of Morton’s frightened, moonlit face, to Horatio’s bright green eyes when she’d pulled him out of the sack where the young Aldous had trapped him, to her parents’ sleeping selves slumped in the depths of Dr. Widdecombe and Delora’s closet. It spoke with a voice that was very small and very soft, and yet it seemed to contain the voices of her parents, and the Deweys, and the Nivenses, and the cats. In a whisper, it said—