The Books of Elsewhere, Vol. 1: The Shadows

by Jacqueline West

  “I don’t think he went anywhere,” said Morton, pulling the askew blankets down around him like a cape. Hershel plopped down onto the floorboards.

  Harvey sniffed the air. “The lad speaks aright,” he whispered.

  Olive let the beam of her flashlight run slowly over the walls. Shadows swirled and thinned in the corners, trailing bony arms along the edges of the light. Something that looked like a long, twisted hand beckoned with one lumpy finger. The flashlight beam was growing dim.

  “I think these batteries are dying,” said Olive. As they watched, the light became fuzzy and thin. Then it deepened slowly into black, fading out like the last image on a movie screen.

  As Olive scrambled to pull a fresh flashlight out of her pocket, Morton gave a terrified peep. Leopold jumped down onto her shoulders. Horatio and Harvey arched their backs, hissing. Blackness fell over them like a blanket.

  Again, Olive felt the cold, wet touch of the shadows. They trailed over her bare arms, brushed her face. And this time, they held on.

  Olive tried to reach for the flashlight but her arms were being held tight. Long, dark fingers had wrapped like cables around her wrists. She felt a cold breath brush her cheek, and she was sure it wasn’t Leopold’s. “Olive . . .” a voice whispered.

  “Be gone, fiend!” yowled Harvey, leaping into the darkness. Horatio jumped after him. The shadows retreated for just a moment. Olive used that split second to get a firm grip on the backup flashlight in her right pocket. She sliced the beam through the darkness like a sword.

  Harvey was lying on his back with all four claws in midair. Leopold was sitting up on his two hind legs with his forepaws posed like a boxer. Horatio had positioned himself defensively, teeth bared, on Morton’s lap. The three cats froze in their positions as a clot of shadows slithered swiftly around the edge of the door.

  “There he goes!” shouted Leopold, bounding toward the hallway. “Harvey, guard the boy!” Harvey made a pouting sound, which Leopold ignored. “Miss, bring the lantern! Hurry! We’ll guard your flank—he’s heading for the attic!”

  “I’m coming too!” shouted Morton. “Somebody give me a lantern!”

  Olive scrambled to her feet, gripping the handle of the camp lantern in her left hand and the flashlight in her right. Horatio and Leopold ran at her heels. Behind them came Morton and Harvey, looking for something to light Morton’s candle. Olive skidded into the hallway, raced to the front bedroom, and stopped in front of the huge gold frame. The ancient town, like every other painting, had gone dark. Only the huge stone arch remained on the canvas, its stern-faced soldiers staring down from either side. But now, at the end of its massive stone tunnel, there was only blackness.

  “The spectacles—” moaned Olive. “I can’t get through.”

  “I’ll take you, miss,” said Leopold.

  “It would be a privilege, my lady,” said Harvey, bolting into the room and bumping Leopold aside.

  “I’ll take you, but I’m not sure what will happen if we go through a painting that looks like this,” said Horatio.

  For a moment, all of them stared through the stone archway into the darkness.

  “We have to try it anyway,” said Olive. “Let’s all go.”

  Olive grabbed Horatio’s tail in one hand and Leopold’s in the other. Morton, unlit candle still clamped in one fist, took hold of Harvey’s tail with his free hand. Together, they all stepped through the archway, and beyond the frame.

  It was like passing through a waterfall. In a blink, the darkness washed over them, cold and heavy. Then they were all standing in the tiny, dusty entry to the attic. Olive let go of the cats’ tails and groped for the doorknob.

  A blast of freezing air hit her face. Olive didn’t hesitate. She was already on the first stair when something knocked the flashlight out of her hand. The attic door slammed shut behind her, leaving her all alone.

  22

  OLIVE COULD HEAR the cats scratching furiously at the other side of the door. She groped for the doorknob and pulled, but the door was stuck firmly shut. It was as if the entire weight of the darkness were pressing against it, sealing it closed.

  “Morton!” she called, tugging wildly at the door. “Horatio!”

  If anyone gave an answer, Olive couldn’t hear it.

  Olive groped along the dusty steps for her dropped flashlight, but it was nowhere to be found. It was as if it had been swallowed by the darkness. She pulled out the flashlight that was still wedged in her left pocket. It was a smallish light, the kind people keep in their glove compartments in case they have to change a tire in the dark. Olive wished that she were only changing a tire. She had no idea how it was done, but she was sure that it would be easier than this.

  Cautiously, she moved the light back and forth along each step of the attic stairs. Spiders skittered out of the beam. Other bugs—dead ones—littered the steps. Olive would normally have minded the dead bugs just as much as the living ones, but she realized that at the moment, bugs—even dead ones—seemed positively friendly.

  The attic smelled, as before, of dust and old paper, but now the smell was fainter, dulled by the freezing cold. The stairs creaked under her feet. She climbed carefully, twitching the beam of light back and forth,

  Olive reached the top of the stairs and looked around. The lumpy shapes of covered furniture and jumbled boxes made vague mounds in the darkness. She ran the small white circle of her flashlight around the room.

  The darkness played tricks with her eyes, making the piled shape of an old armoire look like someone looming in the shadows, and turning the hat rack into a leering skeleton. Olive could hear her own heart thundering in her ears. She wished that something—anything—would break the menacing silence.

  So she cleared her throat and started to sing.

  Olive wasn’t a very good singer, but she was a very loud singer. She began with “This Little Light of Mine,” and moved on to “Let the Sun Shine In.” Then she sang as many verses of “Candle on the Water” as she could remember, which wasn’t very many, so she sang the refrain five or six times. As long as she was singing, Olive felt just the teeniest bit less alone.

  The darkness seemed to be listening. Olive edged slowly around the attic, peering into the clutter with her flashlight. As she moved, the shadows on the slanted walls flickered and twisted like black smoke.

  She was singing the only words she could remember from “Glow, Little Glowworm” when the beam of her flashlight sputtered and went out. “Glitter, glitter . . .” Her voice wavered and faded away like the beam of light.

  Olive’s hand quivered. She heard the flashlight fall from her fingers and thump on the floor. The light had been too small to do any real good, of course. She might as well have tried to fight a duel with a toothpick. But it had been comforting. The camping lantern still dangled from her other hand. It was her last chance. She knew she had to save it.

  Something moved in the dark behind her. She felt a cold touch on her neck. Olive spun around. There was nothing there. At least, nothing that she could see.

  The cold came from every direction. The shadows grew thicker and thicker. They reminded Olive of thunderclouds, pulling themselves together into huge piles before a storm.

  And then Olive felt something filmy and cold run over her arm. A scream moved up her throat and tried to get out of her mouth, but it ran into her clenched teeth and came out of her nose instead. Olive bolted toward the stairs. Halfway there, she remembered that the door was stuck shut. And, on the other side of that door, Morton, Horatio, Leopold, and Harvey were waiting. They were probably listening, with all of their ears pressed to the door. They would hear her running down the stairs, giving up.

  Olive stopped. She turned slowly back toward the center of the attic.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” she said to the darkness. Her voice sounded weak and quivery. Olive took a deep breath and said it again. “I’m not afraid of you, Mr. Aldous McMartin! And I don’t think you’re such a great painter,
either!”

  This time her words filled up the whole attic. For a moment, the darkness pulled back. Then it rushed toward her, wrapping itself around her body, freezing against her bare skin. Olive’s arms and legs felt full of lead.

  Her teeth were chattering, but she said as lightly as she could, “Is that supposed to be scary? Because it isn’t.”

  She shuffled toward the center of the attic, rubbing her freezing arms with her hands. Her toe bumped something tall and wooden, which creaked on its hinges. Olive reached out one tentative palm. It was a mirror—the old, floor-length, tilting kind. And with that, the little twinkling seed of a plan rooted itself in Olive’s mind.

  She worked quickly. The attic was freezing, its cold air stinging her throat and lungs, but Olive forced herself to keep moving. Even though it was still much too dark to see, her other senses were adjusting. She had never heard things so sharply and clearly; she had never realized how much her fingertips could tell her. Olive whipped the dusty sheets off of the old furniture, running her hands quickly over their surfaces, dragging things into place.

  At first, she thought she was imagining it when strange things began to appear in the darkness. She knew that when you stared at a light and then closed your eyes, you could still see its traces on the inside of your eyelids. If you pushed your fingers against your closed eyes, sometimes spots of color jumped and flashed against the blackness, like Christmas lights stuck through black paper. So maybe it was only her eyes playing tricks when a long, eely shape moved through the darkness and flickered past her face. That was what Olive told herself. She told herself the same thing when something with wide, staring eyes and long teeth swam through the corner of her vision. But when something slippery and cold and covered with scales dragged itself slowly across her ankles, Olive knew that it wasn’t her imagination.

  She wished that she could reach out and flick a light switch. But she couldn’t. She was having a nightmare, and she couldn’t wake up.

  In spite of the cold, beads of sweat popped up like a rash on Olive’s bare skin. She rubbed her arms, holding herself tightly. For a moment, she felt so forlorn that she wanted to lie down on the floor and cry. She would probably fall asleep and get hypothermia, she knew, but at least all of this would be over. No more cold snaky things with big eyes and teeth slithering past her through the black.

  “That’s just what you want, isn’t it?” Olive whispered to the darkness.

  No one answered.

  Olive kicked both her feet. There was nothing there—at least, not anymore. She took a shaky breath and got back to work.

  More grayish shapes with long, whipping tails swam around her. Some shapes had beaks, long noses, claws that sliced through the dark air. Olive ignored them, or pretended to. They were only a distraction, an illusion. The real danger was still lurking in the darkness, not yet allowing itself to be seen. She went back to humming “Let the Sun Shine In” as carelessly as she could, pushing the furniture into position.

  It was getting harder to ignore the cold, however. Her whole body was shaking so badly that she was afraid she was going to knock something over. Her toes, especially the ones on her bare foot, were as lifeless as pebbles. She couldn’t even feel the cold in them anymore. Her fingers were so stiff and numb, she was afraid they might shatter. The armoire rattled as she hauled it slowly toward the center of the attic. Olive knew that she wouldn’t be able to keep going for much longer. Her eyelashes were freezing together, coated by the quickly cooling steam of her breath.

  Finally, all of the pieces were in place. Olive pulled an old footstool into the very center of the attic, held the camping lantern in her lap, and waited.

  It was hard to sit still. The cold was ten times worse the moment she stopped moving, and the darkness was gathering itself. It settled around her, as solid as stone. Olive began to have the feeling that she wouldn’t be able to move if she tried.

  “Olive,” said a voice. It was no longer a whisper. Now it was a low, solid voice—a man’s voice. It sounded like rocks grinding against one another in a very deep, dark hole. “Olive, come with me.”

  Olive’s foot twitched. “No,” she whispered.

  “Come here,” commanded the voice.

  Both of Olive’s feet made a little shuffling step. “No,” Olive said, more loudly this time. “I’m not going to go with you and let you push me out a window.”

  In the darkness behind her, a man laughed. “Very well. I simply thought you would want to get away from those spiders.”

  She felt them first on her ankles, and then on her calves, and then everywhere on her body: hundreds of running legs—legs skittering and crawling and climbing all over her. Olive squeezed her eyes shut. If she screamed, they would go into her mouth. More than anything, she wanted to turn on the lantern and prove that the spiders were only a trick, but if she did, her whole plan would be spoiled. It was her last chance.

  This isn’t real, Olive told herself. This isn’t real this isn’t real this isn’t real.

  All at once, the tickling, crawling legs were gone. Olive took a deep breath.

  “You’re a brave girl, Olive,” said the voice. “That’s one of your few good qualities, isn’t it?”

  Olive’s stomach gave a sick little lurch.

  The voice went on, lower, closer. “Your parents will wonder where you’ve gone. For a while, that is. Eventually they’ll move on. Perhaps they will have another child. One that is more . . . what they had hoped for.” The voice sighed. “I know—children can be such a terrible disappointment sometimes.”

  Olive forced her voice out of her throat. “They wouldn’t forget me. They’d look for me.”

  “But is there anyone else who will?” the voice rumbled against Olive’s neck. When she turned around, no one was there. The voice went on. “Is there anyone else, in all the world, who will truly miss you when you’re gone?”

  “M—Morton will miss me,” Olive stammered.

  “Morton would have gone with anyone who let him out of that painting.” The voice chuckled mirthlessly. “If he had had a choice, it wouldn’t have been you.”

  “The cats . . .” whispered Olive.

  “Ah, the cats. The cats just want to be rid of me, to be quite frank,” said the voice, which now seemed to be coming from behind Olive’s knees. “Once all of this is over, they’ll forget about you more quickly than your old schoolmates have.”

  Olive could barely breathe. “How do you know about that?” Her voice was a tiny wisp in the icy air.

  The voice laughed again. “At all of those schools you’ve left, no one is saying, ‘Where is that Olive Dunwoody? ’ They forgot your name long ago. Some of them never knew it at all. Most haven’t even noticed that you’re gone.”

  The darkness was getting inside of her. Olive could feel it. It had seeped in through her eyes, and her ears, and her skin, and now everything inside of her was dark. The world was just as dark and empty, full of holes left by people she didn’t even know. Darkness was all that was left. Darkness, and some tiny thing she was trying to remember, but it kept slipping away from her grasp, like a floating dandelion seed.

  “Ask yourself, Olive: Who would notice? Who would care if you just . . . disappeared?”

  A small, warm breeze stirred the frigid air, and Olive knew the tiny attic window was open. “What lovely moonlight,” said the voice. “Just enough light to look at these paintings. They are all still there, you know. Come and see.” Olive heard the soft clack of canvases falling against each other, and knew that the thing—Aldous McMartin, or whatever it was—was flipping through the stack of paintings where she had once found Baltus. “I would even let you choose, Olive. You can decide for yourself which painting you would like to be inside. Or I could paint something new, especially for you.” The voice dropped to a whisper. “You’ve already imagined it, haven’t you, Olive? Sometimes you would rather be in a painting than face the real world, wouldn’t you?”

  Olive didn’t an
swer. Couldn’t answer. But way down in the farthest, darkest corner of her mind, a tiny voice whispered Yes.

  Air like the blast from an open freezer settled on her face. Olive closed her eyes, letting the darkness come closer. It pushed the floating dandelion seed out of her reach. Maybe she should stop fighting, stop trying to remember.

  The frost on her eyelashes was turning to heavy crystals of ice. Her clothes were like stones, solid and heavy. She felt so sleepy. The darkness inside her eyelids was much warmer and friendlier than the darkness in the attic. She could rest. She could just go to sleep, and it would all be over.

  “Very well. I will decide for you,” the voice whispered in her ear. It was almost gentle, like someone tucking her into bed at night. “Then you will truly belong here, in this house, forever. And no one will ever make you feel out of place again.” The words wrapped around Olive, warm and heavy. They pulled her down toward the bottom of the darkness. “Go to sleep, Olive. You won’t need to feel a thing. No more fear. No more loneliness. Nothing at all.”

  The last wisps of the world faded away. Olive felt as numb as her toes. Numb to cold, to fear, to everything. Her heart was one big empty room, and its emptiness echoed with the things that were missing. She had never noticed how much she had been keeping in there until it was all gone.

  In that big blank darkness, the thing she had been trying to catch, the thing that had been floating through her mind like a dandelion seed, suddenly came to rest. And it wasn’t a dandelion seed at all. It was a tiny, flickering light—the light from a candle your mother hands you. The light of a flashlight against a dark sky.

  Olive could almost feel the hands on top of hers: her mother’s, her father’s, Morton’s small warm palm, the fur-tufted paws of three cats. They were all there, inside of her, as she pushed the button on the camping lantern.

  The sudden brilliance of fluorescent light exploded the darkness. The light was reflected by the ring of mirrors that Olive had moved into place, its beams multiplying, glancing in all directions, building a cage of brightness around Olive and the thing that stood next to her. Squinting, Olive could just make out the figure from Mr. McMartin’s self-portrait—something dark, gaunt, and twisted, something barely human—trapped inside the circle of light. In the shadow that should have been its face, Olive could see two spots reflecting the light—two eyes that looked right into hers. But he couldn’t scare her anymore. The light was erasing Aldous McMartin. Brightness ate away his feet, his legs, his long, knobby fingers, his skeletal jaw. When only a mouth and eyes were left, he let out a roar that echoed inside the attic, shaking the dust from the walls, rattling out through the old gray stones. And then every trace of him was gone.