The Strangers Read online

  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.”

  16

  SINCE HALLOWEEN 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.

  Olive blinked, looking harder. No, the light didn’t cause the shades to disappear. Instead, as it touched them, it revealed human faces—actual human faces and actual human bodies, as faint and pale as the shapes formed by rising smoke. They were the faces of men and women, with craggy features and dark, deep-set eyes. McMartin faces. And the faces themselves were changing, shifting from young to old, old to young, floating through entire lifetimes within a few seconds. But the fire in the bowl had burned out, and the light of the candles was weak. The darkness was larger, and much, much stronger.

  “I call you.” Delora was shouting now. “And I cast you out.”

  Olive’s voice stuck in her throat. “I—I call you . . .” she choked. “. . . And I cast you out.”

  The words died away, leaving the basement so quiet that Olive could hear the candles sputtering.

  One of the smoky silhouettes—one with a long, reptilian body—started to laugh. It was a strange sound, more like water steaming in a huge iron kettle than real laughter, but Olive knew that laughter was what it was. Another of the shades joined in, and then another and another.

  In the center of the circle, Olive wobbled on her feet. “Is it working?” she called through the shifting ring of shadows. If Delora gave an answer, Olive couldn’t hear it.

  Olive took a deep, freezing breath. “I cast you out!” she shouted.

  Her voice ricocheted from the walls.

  The shades fell silent.

  Then, as one, they rushed inward, silhouettes paling and warping in the ligh
t. Olive felt a wave of freezing air sweep over her, blowing out all but three of the candles. She heard Delora gasp. In the dimness, a giant, bony dog lumbered forward. Olive watched its toothy muzzle dissolve into a woman’s smile as it bent toward the flames. There was a soft, whooshing sound, and the last of the light was gone.

  In the darkness, Doctor Widdecombe let out a shriek that shook the dust from the rafters. With an audible rip from his tweed jacket, he dove for the staircase.

  “Run, Byron!” Delora cried. Olive heard her steps creaking up the stairs after him.

  “Wait!” Olive screamed. She plunged forward, knocking over the metal bowl. Dead candles clattered and rolled around her feet. A frigid wall of air broke over her, slippery fingers and claws and hands dragging at her skin, and then she was scrabbling on all fours up the rickety wooden staircase. The icy nearness of the shades rushed just behind her. Eely tendrils grasped at her ankles.

  Doctor Widdecombe, Delora, and Olive raced through the basement door into the kitchen. With all the lights off and evening settling outside, only the streetlamps and a sliver of moon saved the house from total darkness. Olive slammed the basement door shut behind her, but a black trail, slick and smooth as spilled oil, poured instantly from beneath it, looming back into hideous forms once it had snaked free.

  “We can’t stop them!” Delora shouted, glancing over her shoulder. Her hand locked around Olive’s wrist. “Just run!”

  Dragging Olive behind her, Delora flew through the kitchen and into the hall, with Doctor Widdecombe chuffing ahead of them like a tweed train engine.

  Walter stood at the end of the hallway, gazing out the windows near the front door. Olive watched his face swivel toward them in the dimness. “I had to set a little fire near the porch to keep the familiars occupied,” he began, “but—”