The Strangers (17 page)

“Thank you,” Walter gushed. He ducked past Olive, the ghoul’s robes fluttering around him. “Thank you.” In a few quick strides, he was out of the library and through the front door. It hung open behind him, letting in the night air.

Feeling suddenly defrosted and empty, Olive trailed across the room. The hallway beyond still lay in darkness. She hadn’t had time to reach for the next light switch when a shadow entered the beam of light that fell through the library doors.

Olive glanced up at the gray woman’s string of pearls and deep, cold eyes. She took a startled step back.

“An interesting choice, Olive Dunwoody,” said the shade of Ms. McMartin. “Letting your enemy go free. I thought you would wish to protect this house.”

“I—I
do,
” Olive stammered. “But I won’t be like you. I won’t—”

Before she could finish, the misty figure had drifted back into the blackness, its face dissolving, its pearls fading like something sinking into a deep lake.

Shuddering, Olive dashed from the glow of the library to the front door, flicking on the entry lights. In their sconces, dusty bulbs flickered to life along the hall. For a second, Olive wondered how Walter had managed to shut off all of the lights at once—but maybe he knew something about fuses and breakers that Olive didn’t. (If he knew what fuses and breakers actually
were,
he would have been ahead of Olive.) She stood on the threshold for a moment, listening to the rusty creak of the porch swing and watching the synthetic cobwebs sway between the pillars. Behind her, the house was quiet and lifeless once again.

With a sigh, she reached for the doorknob. Her fingers had just closed around the chilly metal when a voice from the darkness murmured, “You shouldn’t have done that, Olive.”

Rutherford stepped out of the porch’s shadows. A streak of moonlight glinted on his glasses, turning them into two smaller, fingerprint-smudged moons.

“You shouldn’t have let Walter go,” he said. “He knows where your parents are.”

“
I
saw it,” Rutherford whispered. “In his thoughts.”

They were huddled against the porch’s inner corner, next to the softly groaning swing, and Rutherford was speaking so fast that at first Olive thought he’d said “I saw wet tennis thoughts,” which didn’t make any sense at all.

“I was certain that Walter was worthy of our trust, but I was misled, and I give you my deepest apologies,” Rutherford rushed on. “But I’m sure I’m not being misled now. He knows where your parents are—although I couldn’t read anything about the precise location. I’d just come over here to check on you, because I could read very clearly that something had gone wrong, and when Walter ran past me on his way out the door, I caught a fragment of his thoughts. He
knows
something!” Rutherford finished, jiggling back and forth so fast that his face was only a moonlit blur.

For the first time in days, Olive felt a spark of pure hope. Walter
knew
something! Something that might bring her parents home at last!

“We need to find out what he knows,” Olive whispered back.

“In order to pick up additional information, I would need to get closer to him,” said Rutherford. “Which would mean sneaking into the house next door.”

“Let’s go!” Olive shot toward the porch steps, and halted with one foot over the edge. “Wait. If we leave, there will be no one guarding the house. The cats are Elsewhere. They won’t come out as long as the McMartins’ shades are loose.”

“Perhaps I could go alone . . .” said Rutherford, his jiggling starting to slow.

“No. We’ll be safer together.” Olive chewed on her lower lip. “We’ll just have to get in and out as fast as we can.”

“An excellent plan,” Rutherford whispered back.

With Olive leading the way, they slipped around the side of the old stone house and through the lilac hedge. Shriveled twigs clacked and rattled around them. The tall gray house waited on the other side, as cold and quiet as a gravestone. As they inched closer, Olive spotted a fragile red glow behind one curtained window, and knew that the old glass lamps were burning in the study.

“Here is an eventuality I did not consider,” Rutherford whispered as he and Olive pressed their backs to the cold gray wall. “How do we get in? The doors are protected by a voice-released locking spell. We saw Walter use it on Halloween, remember?”

Olive’s eyes traveled along the wall to the edge of the front porch. “What if we climbed from the railings up onto the porch roof, and then went in through the broken window in Lucinda’s old bedroom?”

“Are you sure that’s safe?” Rutherford asked. The faint moonlight revealed his worried face.

“No,” said Olive. “But I’m going to try it anyway.”

As quietly as she could manage, Olive hauled herself onto the porch railing, teetering along its narrow wooden beam. She wrapped her chilly fingers around the roof’s edge. From there, she managed to swing one leg up over the roof, and then to roll the rest of her body up to safety, being careful not to crush the spectacles. She reached back down for Rutherford’s hand.

They crawled across the leaf-strewn roof. The curtains in the shattered window drifted softly over the sill before them, snagging now and then on the remaining bits of glass that jutted around the frame like carnivorous teeth. Cautiously, Olive and Rutherford climbed over the shards and through the empty window.

Inside what had been Lucinda’s bedroom, the air felt even colder than it had outside. Dead leaves cluttered the corners. Rain had faded the delicate curtains, and discolored patches had formed on the once-polished floor. The scorched spot where Annabelle had turned Lucinda into a burst of oily flames remained on the boards, dark and deep enough to be seen even in the weak moonlight.

“We’ll have to be careful as we go downstairs,” Rutherford whispered, pausing in the bedroom’s open doorway. “There might be other protective spells in place.”

“All right,” Olive whispered back. “And from this point on, no talking, unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

“A vow of silence. I agree.” Rutherford held up one hand, oath-taking-style, before treading softly into the hall.

Without any windows, and with no lights filtering up from the floor below, the hallway was as dim as the inside of an oilcan. Olive pressed her spine to the wall, feeling the deep chill of the house penetrate through her sweater. For the first time in decades, living people were occupying this house—and yet, with its neglected, chilly rooms and pitch-black corridors, the house felt more lifeless than ever.

Olive started down the wooden staircase, inching her toes over each step, and setting her feet down as lightly as she could. In the darkness, it was impossible to tell where one step ended and the next began, but at last her toes hit a patch of floor that didn’t have an edge.

Keeping silent, Olive and Rutherford glided along the downstairs hallway. Here, all of the curtains had been closed, so no lights from the street or sky could lessen the corridor’s darkness. They had to navigate by touch until they rounded a corner, and a slip of warm red light spilled across a patch of the hardwood floor.

They had reached the dining room.

A soft crackle of fire came from within, along with the sound of familiar voices. Olive and Rutherford leaned in, pressing their ears to the door’s chilly surface.

“. . . ever did you hope to accomplish by creeping into that house in the middle of the night?” Doctor Widdecombe’s voice was saying, quite loudly.

“Mmm . . . just some ingredients . . .” said Walter’s much deeper, much quieter voice. “Shifting Seed. Things for transformational spells.”

“Transformational spells?” boomed Doctor Widdecombe. “It’s fortunate that you didn’t find any Shifting Seed! You might have turned yourself into a ninety-eight-pound toad!”

“And that poor child,” breathed Delora’s voice. “If you’d woken her, can you imagine how frightened she would have been? She has quite enough fear to deal with in that house today.”

“It was terrifying enough when you woke
us,
bursting back in here like the world’s worst cat burglar,” put in Doctor Widdecombe.

“Sorry . . . mmm . . .” Walter’s voice muttered something too low for Olive to catch.

“Yes, well, when we have determined how to rid the house of the shades—a pursuit in which your aunt and I are both fully engaged—we will have to reconsider whether you are fit to act as Olive’s guard after all.”

Olive hung on each word, biting her lips to keep silent. Her heart was thundering, and her breath was coming faster, and a little piece of hair had slipped inside her ear and was itching and tickling irritatingly. What a liar Walter was! She could open this door right now and proclaim to Doctor Widdecombe and Delora that Walter was a traitor, ready to turn against them all. She gritted her teeth. The itch in her ear mixed with her simmering anger, and suddenly, Olive was boiling over. She had just grabbed the doorknob, when Rutherford’s fingers locked around her wrist.

“What?” Olive mouthed.

Rutherford shook his head emphatically. He tugged her away from the door, along the hall, toward the kitchen. Olive trailed him through the blackness, chewing the inside of her cheek in a fury.

At the far corner of the kitchen, where the voices from the dining room could no longer reach them, Rutherford stopped.

“What
is
it?” Olive demanded through clenched teeth.

“What were you thinking, Olive?” Rutherford whispered. “Why were you about to give us away before we’ve ascertained what has been going on?”

“Because,” said Olive, in a much louder whisper, “we should just tell Delora and Doctor Widdecombe that Walter is lying.
They
can deal with him!”

“Is that what you meant about ‘knowing the answers’?”

“The answers to what?” Olive whispered back.

“Didn’t you think something about
knowing the answers?
”

“No. I was thinking,
We should go in there and tell everybody the truth,
and that’s what I’m still thinking right now!”

Olive turned back toward the hall, but Rutherford caught her by the arm.

“I’m absolutely certain that I heard those words. Although, come to think of it, it
didn’t
sound like your usual thoughts. But it came from somewhere close by.”

Olive frowned. “Did you hear anything else?”

“Something about Aristotle . . . displacement . . . a blue bath towel . . .”

Olive’s heart shot upward, fizzing against her ribs like an exploding pop bottle. She grabbed Rutherford’s arm with both hands.

“I don’t know what that means, so don’t ask me,” he said defensively.

“I do!” Olive cried.
“It’s my dad!”
She choked back her excitement, forcing it into a whisper. “Can you tell where it came from?”

“No, nothing about its surroundings. But if we get closer to the source, I may be able to read more clearly.”

“Then go!” whispered Olive, using every bit of her willpower to keep herself from shouting instead.

Rutherford swayed, listening, his shoes creaking softly on the kitchen floor. Then he took off for the hall, with Olive hanging on to his sleeve.

They hurried past the dining room door, where arguing voices could still be heard, and along the edge of Lucinda’s perfect white parlor and around the foot of the staircase. One tiny window set in the front door wasn’t covered by a curtain, and the pale glow of moon, stars, and streetlamps tinged the nearest few feet of the hall.

“I don’t think the source is upstairs,” said Rutherford slowly. “And, Olive, thinking
hurry up
over and over again is not actually helpful.”

“Then just
hurry up,
” said Olive.

As Olive tiptoed behind, Rutherford crept to the other side of the hall, around the barricade formed by the staircase, where three closed doors made darker rectangles in the wall. He passed the first door, hesitated, then darted toward the second. It groaned softly on its hinges as he pulled it open.

Inside, the room was utterly dark. There were no windows, not even covered by curtains, and no other sources of light. Nothing glinted or glimmered in the distant glow from the front door.

“Well,” whispered Rutherford bravely, “I shall go first.” He edged through the open door.

With a deep breath, Olive followed. She shut the door quietly behind them.

Within the blackness, Olive stretched her arms out, testing the air. She hadn’t taken two steps before she hit something with her fingers—something soft and furry, and then something heavy and rough, and then something that felt like silk. Beside her, she could hear Rutherford rustling through the fabric too.

“We must be in a closet,” Olive whispered, patting at the wall of cloth. Her hands traveled up, still patting and poking, until suddenly they were patting and poking at something not made of fabric at all.

The thing was about the size of a basketball, but lumpier and slicker. The ridge of one large bump stuck out of one side. Beside the bump were two matching pits, which led down to cheeks, which thrust outward into something that was not a nose, but a
muzzle
: a long, tooth-filled maw.

Olive let out a shriek, muffling it in her sleeve a second too late.

“What is it?” Rutherford’s worried voice asked, from somewhere in the darkness.

“It’s a severed head!” Olive squeaked. Diving toward the door, she groped along the walls, searching for a light switch. She found one just to the right of the doorway, but when she tried to turn it on: Nothing. She flipped the switch again and again, as a growing panic buzzed through her body.
Of course,
Olive realized. The lights
wouldn’t
work in a house where no one had paid the electric bill for months, but she was still stubbornly jiggling the switch when a needle of blue-white light poked through the darkness.

“Did you say ‘a severed head’?” Rutherford whispered, aiming the miniature flashlight at Olive’s face.

“Why didn’t you say you had a flashlight?” Olive hissed back.

“Because I knew we could only use it in dire circumstances, or the light would make us too easily detectable,” Rutherford explained, swinging the beam across the room.

They were indeed in a closet: a well-stuffed storage closet the size of a small bedroom. A row of clothes—old wool coats and velvet cloaks and silky robes—made a solid wall of fabric ahead of them. And on the shelf just above the clothes was a bumpy, hollow-eyed, rubbery face.

Olive stepped closer. The face was made of plastic, with holes for eyes, and rows of molded, snarling teeth. “It’s just a mask,” she breathed. “A werewolf mask.”

A werewolf mask.

Olive’s memory shot to the painting in the kitchen, where the stonemasons worked on their never-finished wall. They had seen monsters—three or four monsters—hurry through the old stone house on Halloween night. They had mentioned werewolves, Olive was sure of it. She remembered the second builder’s nervous voice.
And there was a mummy. . .

Olive lunged toward the closet’s high shelf, groping along it until she found another mask: a second werewolf. Behind it was the deflated face of another werewolf. And then, finally, a mummy mask, with everything but its empty eyeholes covered in strips of rubber bandages.

“Four masks,” said Olive. “Two for my parents. That would leave one for Walter, and one for Annabelle.” Olive looked up at Rutherford, who was peering over her shoulder. “Did Walter have the chance to change costumes that night? Or was there
another
person helping Annabelle? Three werewolves, plus one mummy, plus one ghoul . . .”

“Wait,” Rutherford whispered. “Say that again.”

“Three werewolves, plus one mummy, plus one ghoul—”

“Three plus one plus one is five,” Rutherford interrupted, his eyes going distant. “Three and five are both prime numbers. One is not generally considered a prime number.”

A breath caught in Olive’s lungs. She felt her rib cage expand, as if there wasn’t room inside for all of that air and her beating, bouncing heart.

“The list of primes, excluding one, is as follows: two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen . . .” Rutherford’s voice sped quickly on, while his body swiveled slowly back to the row of clothes. “. . . twenty-three, twenty-nine, thirty-one, thirty-seven . . .”