Still Life Page 7

  “I do,” Leopold whispered, from his spot near Olive’s knees.

  Olive looked down. The cat’s eyes were fixed on the canvas, their gaze so vivid and bright that they seemed to make the painting itself glow. “You were right, miss,” he said softly. “There is something alive inside this painting.”

  “Are you sure?” Olive whispered back.

  “Absolutely certain, miss,” said the cat. “But Mary Nivens did not put it there.”

  The back of Olive’s neck prickled. With one slightly shaky hand, she reached up to touch the painting. It flexed softly against her palm, like the peel of a huge, ripe fruit. She pushed harder, and again, she felt the painting shift against her fingertips, letting out a sudden gust of cool, damp air.

  “We have to climb inside,” she breathed. “Rutherford, will you stand guard? If something happens to one of us, the other one can bring you the message.”

  Rutherford nodded intently. “I’ll be your sentry,” he said. “For historical accuracy, I should be armed with a halberd or a glaive of some sort, but I didn’t think to bring mine along.

  “I’ve just perceived a problem, however,” said Rutherford, before Olive could grasp the picture frame. “If something were to happen to both of you, I would be unable to come to your aid.”

  “Oh. You’re right.” Olive lifted the spectacles from around her neck. “I suppose you should keep these with you. But be very, very careful.”

  “Your warning is unnecessary, though it will not go unheeded,” said Rutherford, taking the spectacles from Olive’s hand. “And I’m certain that you will be very careful as well.”

  “Ready, miss?” Leopold offered her his sleek black tail.

  Olive grasped it. Together, they climbed into the thick gold frame.

  The image of Morton stretched and warped as they pushed forward. Leopold raised his chin, marching determinedly on. Olive wriggled after him, and around her, the painting itself began to soften and tear, letting her head and shoulders push their way inside.

  She could smell something earthy and faintly rotten in the air, and the sky went from a soft blue to gray-white, and the pale streak of Morton’s face gave way to wild marshy ground, and suddenly Olive was toppling through the frame onto a thick tuft of damp brown grass.

  She looked up. The frame hung above her in the foggy air. The portrait of Morton, its profile now facing the opposite direction, mended itself as though it had never been disturbed at all.

  Leopold had landed on a tussock a few feet away. His ears stood up like spear points. He sniffed at the air.

  “Scotland,” he said, in a soft voice. “The bogs.”

  “Like . . . cranberry bogs?” asked Olive hopefully, who had learned all about cranberry bogs in the report she’d done on Wisconsin for geography class.

  “No,” said Leopold. “Not like cranberry bogs at all. Be very careful where you step, miss.”

  Olive got cautiously to her feet. The world inside the painting was stark and harsh and strangely beautiful. In the distance, she could see the crags of painted hills, and a few delicate birch trees clustering against the sky. But between them and the hills, stretching away for hundreds of yards on every side, was a flat expanse of moss and mud.

  This didn’t look like one of Mary’s sketches.

  This looked like . . .

  “Aldous painted this, didn’t he?” she whispered.

  Leopold gave one sharp nod.

  Olive looked around again. The ground on every side was dark and shaggy and still. What living thing had she noticed inside this deserted place? What had moved in this gray-brown emptiness?

  She took one slow step forward.

  “Keep to the dry grass, miss,” Leopold warned. “People who fall into the bogs aren’t found again for a very long time. Sometimes for thousands of years.”

  Olive paused. Arms out for balance, she stared down at the land in front of her. A few steps away, in a patch of dark earth, there was a tiny, almost invisible quake.

  “It moved!” Olive shouted. “Right there! I knew it! I knew I saw something!”

  “Where, miss?” Leopold asked, examining the ground with narrowed eyes.

  “Right there.” She pointed. “Something must be buried there!”

  Olive took an eager step forward. The solid layer of moss and mud beneath her crumbled into nothing. She let out a gasp as a gush of freezing liquid rushed over the tops of her boots. All around her, in a wobbling, widening circle, the ground began to shiver.

  “It’s a quaking bog,” she heard Leopold murmur. “One huge, hidden pool, with a little skin of grass on top. Miss, listen to me: Back up very, very carefully.”

  But Olive had already taken two quick, terrified backward steps. A mass of floating sedge dissolved under her feet, and her body plunged downward, into a pit of icy, liquid mud. She didn’t even have time for a last breath before the darkness closed around her.

  FREEZING MUD PLUGGED her nose. Bitter grit slipped through her teeth. Olive thrashed upward, sputtering, shaking. Oily water stung her eyes. She couldn’t see. Gasping for air, she swiped at her eyelids with one hand, reaching out for solid ground with the other. But there was no solid ground to grasp.

  “Listen, miss!” Leopold paced frantically along the edge of the pool. “Don’t splash, or it will pull you deeper! Swim slowly toward me, and—”

  The cat froze. Olive felt a rush of wind chill the wet strands of her hair. She squinted up through the mud, following Leopold’s eyes. The gray sky above them was darkening. Blackness rippled across its painted surface like an invisible fire, leaving only ash behind.

  “He’s close,” Leopold breathed.

  Olive knew who Leopold meant. Aldous McMartin was nearby, close enough to control this part of Elsewhere.

  But how? Had he followed them here, into the museum? How had they not noticed him, when they’d been watching for him the entire time?

  Panicking now, Olive thrashed harder, kicking her legs against the mud. It was like trying to swim in a giant bowl of frozen oatmeal. She felt it thickening around her, the sunken dirt stirred into motion, pulling at her feet, filling her boots with liquid cement.

  “Don’t panic, miss!” Leopold called. “Move slowly!”

  Olive’s brain tried to obey, but her body wouldn’t listen. Everything inside her demanded that she fight, that she kick and struggle, that she get out of this pit of foul black water. Overhead, the wind was rising, rattling the tussocks of grass. Bits of flying bracken stung her face. She groped for the edge of the pool, trying to keep her chin above the liquid. Her coat dragged at her arms. Her soaked jeans felt cold and heavy as iron. Leopold reached out with one paw, but Olive was still too far away, and no matter how hard she fought to stay afloat, she could feel her body being sucked back.

  “Shall I get Rutherford?” Leopold shouted over the noise of the wind.

  “No!” Olive screamed back. “Don’t leave me alone in here!”

  She squinted at the picture frame hanging in the distant, darkening air. The wind was pummeling her now, and between the mud in her eyes and the dimming light, she could barely see. The frame became a golden blotch amid the blackness. Rutherford should have caught her terrified thoughts by now. Why wasn’t he climbing inside?

  “Stay calm, miss!” Leopold shouted. “I’ll be right back!”

  Olive tried to answer, but the mud washed up and over her mouth, filling it with the taste of painted dirt, and she knew that she was being pulled deeper.

  . . . Pulled into that lightless, sloshing, rotten pit by something whose hand had just locked around her ankle.

  Olive gave a frantic kick.

  The hand didn’t let go.

  She felt its fingers tightening, pulling harder, as the black water slid up and over her nostrils, over her eyes, over her head.

  Olive’s
body writhed with panic. Her limbs thrashed. Her lungs burned. The cold, slick fingers hung on.

  Aldous McMartin.

  He was waiting down there, in the darkness, ready to drag her into this cold, black, awful swamp where even her body would be hidden forever from anyone who might try to find her.

  Something solid knocked her on the head.

  Was she getting attacked from above too? Olive lashed out, grasping for the solid object, and felt her hand break the surface of the bog. Something long and bumpy and firm scraped against her fingertips.

  Olive grabbed it. Locking both hands together, she dragged herself upward until her nose and mouth just cleared the foaming surface. She took a deep, spluttering breath of the windy air.

  “Hang on, miss!” she heard Leopold yell. “Smooth, slow movements! Don’t let go!”

  Squinting through the mud that clotted her eyelashes, Olive spotted his bright green eyes. The cat was pinning the other end of a large branch to a piece of solid ground.

  “Pull, miss!” he shouted. “You can make it!”

  Olive kicked both legs, paddling forward. The freezing fingers around her leg held on.

  “Something’s got my ankle!” she shouted. A burst of wind shrieked across the bog, whipping the surface of the mud into a black froth.

  “Just keep moving!” Leopold shouted back. “Hurry!”

  Olive gave another kick. She wrenched one numb hand free of the branch and lunged forward, grasping a spot closer to its root. Leopold’s teeth closed on her sleeve. Wriggling like an oil-slick seal, Olive squirmed toward the place where the cat stood, feeling the surface beneath her turn from slippery mud to semi-solid earth.

  The hand still hadn’t let go.

  As Olive dragged herself onto the grass, she felt something else beginning to move. The forward momentum of the creature beneath her was pushing her up onto dry ground. She fell on her side, twisting around to stare at the shape emerging from the pit.

  It was a man.

  A man with old-fashioned clothes, and mud-wet hair, and a thick mustache.

  A man who was most definitely not Aldous McMartin.

  He crawled up onto the grass. “Mary?” he croaked, in a voice like a disused engine.

  The name flashed across Olive’s mind, lighting a hundred other little fires—but the wind and the mud quickly blew them out again.

  “We must get out of here, miss.” Leopold’s eyes were on the sky. What had been ash-gray was now inky black. The air above was nearly as cold as the water below. Olive’s teeth were chattering, and the stinging in her hands had grown so deep that she could hardly feel it at all. The painted mud was beginning to trickle away from her body and flow back to its spot, but while this made her cleaner, it didn’t make her any warmer.

  Shivering, she scrambled to the muddy man’s side.

  “Can you walk?” she asked him. “Because we need to hurry!”

  The man’s brown eyes blinked back at her. Up close, she could tell that his woolen clothes were made of paint. His skin was swirled with faint streaks and was clammy and cold from being buried in that bog for who knew how long. Still, while Olive locked her arm through his, she felt a trace of warmth, as faint as one drop of blood in a bowl of milk.

  “Mary,” the man said again. “She didn’t mean to do it. She would never have left me here.” His rusty voice grew louder. “He forced her to do it.”

  “Who did?” said Olive.

  “The old man. Next door. Al—”

  A horrible roaring filled the sky.

  “Run, miss!” Leopold shouted.

  “Come on!” Olive yelled over the noise. “We’ll get you out of here!”

  With all the strength she had left, Olive hoisted the man’s arm onto her shoulders. They staggered toward the frame. The wind lashed at them, howling. Mud and bracken struck their faces. But the man’s legs seemed to be remembering how to hold up the rest of him, and the frame was growing closer.

  “Take hold of my tail, miss!” Leopold yelled.

  In a clumsy, muddy chain, Leopold, Olive, and the strange man clambered out of the bog and through the picture frame.

  Olive tumbled to the museum floor. It wasn’t a comfortable place to land, but the air was warm, and the parquet was wonderfully clean and hard.

  The man plopped to the floorboards beside her. He sat, gazing bewilderedly around. In the dimness, with his paint-shiny skin and antique clothes, he looked fragile and half-unreal, like a photograph that had fallen out of a very old album.

  And Olive recognized the photograph. In it, the man was neat and smiling, his mustache combed and his eyes crinkly and warm. He was posing with the rest of his family: his sweetly smiling wife, his stiff, spotless daughter, and his son, who had a round face and tufty white hair.

  Olive took a shaky breath. “Mr. Nivens?”

  The man’s eyes widened. “Yes?” he whispered.

  “Um—my name is Olive. I know your son.”

  The man’s eyes grew even wider. “Morton?”

  Olive nodded. “I’ll take you to him. He’s safe, at your house.”

  “At our house?” Harold Nivens stepped forward. “He’s all right? He’s alive?”

  “He’s all right,” said Olive hesitantly. “But he’s not really—I mean—he’s like you.”

  “Where was he? Did the old man have him? How did you—”

  “Mr. Nivens?” Olive interrupted as politely as she could. “Morton can tell you everything once we get back to Linden Street. For now, we should probably get out of this museum.” She straightened the knitted cap that covered her hair. It was still slightly damp, but most of the mud had stayed inside the canvas, where it belonged. “Should we take the same route home, Rutherford?”

  Rutherford didn’t answer.

  Olive squinted through the dark gallery. The rest of the room was empty.

  “Rutherford?” she called as loudly as she dared.

  Still no reply.

  “Do you think he ran for help?” Olive asked, turning to Leopold.

  “No, miss.” The cat’s eyes were fixed on one small, dark object on the parquet floor. “I don’t think that’s what happened at all.”

  WHAT IS THAT?” Olive whispered.

  She and Leopold inched forward. Lying on the gleaming floor was a single black glove. It was made of leather, with a red dragon coiling across the backs of its fingers. Embroidered on the cuff, Olive could just make out the words Salem Knights’ Tournament: The Festival of Fights.

  “Rutherford’s glove,” she answered herself. “He must have dropped it.”

  “Master Rutherford isn’t the type to be careless with his things. Especially when they involve the Middle Ages,” said Leopold.

  “So what do you think happened?”

  “I believe he is giving us a sign.” Leopold’s eyes glittered in the darkness. “I believe he threw down the gauntlet.”

  Thanks to Rutherford, Olive had heard this expression before. “You mean there was a fight?” She glanced around the cavernous room. “Do you think there’s any chance that Rutherford won?”

  “Actually, I would call it a draw,” whispered a voice from around a corner.

  Olive froze. Harold and Leopold whirled around.

  A wiry, curly-headed shape crept out of the shadows. As it slunk across the room, Olive could just make out the green dragon emblazoned on its T-shirt.

  “Rutherford!” she breathed. “What happened?”

  “I was nearly apprehended by a security guard,” Rutherford answered in a rapid whisper. “He was working late, apparently. I didn’t even hear his footsteps, and suddenly a hand grasped my collar. I’m not ashamed to admit that I fled.”

  “You outmaneuvered him?” asked Leopold.

  “I ran around the corner, but he was still hanging on to my
coat, so I simply wriggled out of it. I managed to escape by dodging into the next hallway and hiding. However, I lost my gloves—oh, there’s one of them—and my coat, and—”

  “—And the spectacles?” Olive interrupted.

  “Correct.”

  Olive pressed both hands against the sides of her head. Something tightened inside her, asking to be let out in one long, pressure-releasing scream.

  “I realize that you are aggravated,” said Rutherford calmly, “but a security guard will not know the value of the spectacles. If we’re lucky, we may simply be able to find them again. And my coat. And my other glove.”

  “The guard may still be nearby,” Leopold murmured, “but if we proceed with caution, I might be able to trace the scent of your belongings. Follow me.”

  “Mr. Nivens?” Olive whispered as the cat slunk off across the room. “Would you please hide right here until we come back?”

  Harold nodded once before backing into the darkest corner.

  Leopold glided through the hallways like a shadow. Olive raced behind him, trying to keep her eyes fixed on the sheen of his fur. Rutherford’s footsteps trailed after her.

  At one corner, Leopold halted, whiskers twitching. Then he crept to the right, leading them into a narrower passage. This hallway had no paintings along its walls, only doors—heavy gray metal doors, the kind that usually led to storage closets. Before the third door, Leopold stopped. He put his nose to the narrow gap beneath it. Reflected in his eyes, Olive could see the glint of electric light.

  “Through here,” the cat whispered.

  Olive reached for the doorknob. It turned easily in her hand. The door opened inward, revealing a flight of cement stairs that plunged down into the museum’s basement.

  Leopold glided soundlessly down the steps. Olive and Rutherford followed him, bracing themselves against the cold cement wall.

  The staircase ended in a wide gray chamber. Rumbling vents and long pipes crisscrossed the ceiling. One fly-specked light fixture hung in its center, giving off a reluctant yellow haze. To either side, sturdy wooden shelves stacked with cloth-wrapped canvases and empty frames, rolls of bubble wrap, and straw-filled crates dwindled away into the distance. Hooks on the wall held tools and brushes and security guards’ uniforms. The air was cold and dim and dry. It was the perfect place to store paintings, Olive realized. Any paintings.