The Strangers: The Books of Elsewhere: Volume 4 - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

A two-time Pushcart nominee for poetry, Jacqueline West came to writing by way of opera (she studied vocal performance) and acting (she worked as an actress at a dinner theatre while earning her degree). Looking back on it, it's hard for Jacqueline to believe she ever wanted to be an opera singer, but singing, acting, and writing have one thing in common, she says: "They're all about telling a story, about getting inside the mind of someone other than yourself." The Books of Elsewhere series was inspired by a strange old house in Jacqueline's home town--three floors, cracking paint, sagging porches--that was owned by a professor who created all sorts of odd contraptions. Like lots of kids who live mostly in their imaginations, Jacqueline was obsessed with all things mysterious, creepy, and darkly funny, and with stories where magic intersects with everyday life. She was enthralled by Roald Dahl, Lewis Carroll, John Bellairs, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, Calvin and Hobbes, Bunnicula, etc. Jacqueline lives with her husband and their dog, Brom Bones (of Sleepy Hollow fame) in Red Wing, MN. Her first YA novel, tentatively titled All Our Yesterdays, is on our winter 2014 list.

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Olive streaked toward the closest exit, a pair of doors that led not to the crowded front corridor, but to one of the school’s inner halls. She smacked through the doors, their heavy panels creaking open to let out the many running feet that came right behind her. Everyone shot out into the dark corridor, the cats racing protectively around Olive’s ankles, Morton reaching up to grab her gloved hand.

They turned a corner into an even darker hall. Beneath their footsteps and her own gasping breath, Olive could hear the gym doors creaking open, releas-ing a blast of screams and laughter before whooshing shut again.

. . . Leaving one more pair of footsteps to follow them into the darkness.

OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY ENJOY

The Books of Elsewhere: Volume 1: The Shadows Jacqueline West

The Books of Elsewhere: Volume 2: Spellbound Jacqueline West

The Books of Elsewhere: Volume 3: The Second Spy Jacqueline West

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl

The Ghost’s Grave Peg Kehret

Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator Jennifer Allison

Matilda Roald Dahl

Savvy Ingrid Law

The Secret of Platform 13 Eva Ibbotson

DIAL BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

1

HOUSES ARE GOOD at keeping secrets.

They shut out light. They muffle sounds.

Some have musty attics and murky basements. Some have closets stacked with sealed boxes and locked rooms where no one ever goes. A house can stand with its windows curtained and its doors shut for decades—even centuries—without revealing a hint of what is hidden inside.

The old stone house on Linden Street had kept its secrets for a very long time. For more than a hundred years, it had loomed at the crest of the hill, its towering black rooftops piercing a canopy of ancient trees. A pool of shadows surrounded the house, even on the sunniest days. Overgrown hedges enclosed its garden. Its deep-set windows were blurry and dark. Even in the height of summer, its stone walls exhaled a faint, grave-like chill, as though warmth and sunlight could never quite get in, and the darkness inside could never quite get out.

But as this particular summer dwindled into autumn, and the ancient trees dropped their leaves, and the nights grew long and cool and dark, the secrets hidden in the old stone house seemed to rise, at long last, to the surface.

On those lingering autumn evenings, dim red and purple lights began to glow from the house’s upper windows, where the silhouettes of watchful cats sat motionless on the sills. Cobwebs stretched across the porch. Headstones sprouted from the overgrown lawn, jutting up like crooked gray teeth. After sunset, when darkness covered the house, small, fiery faces flickered from the shadows around the front door.

Neighbors walking down Linden Street had always walked a bit faster as they passed the old stone house. Now they ran.

As for the people living inside those chilly stone walls: They were delighted to know that their house looked so frightening.

It was almost Halloween, after all.

• • •

Inside the old stone house were the three Dunwoodys: Alec Dunwoody, a mathematician; Alice Dunwoody, another mathematician; and their daughter, Olive Dunwoody, who was about as likely to become a mathematician as she was to become a three-toed tree sloth.

Throughout the twelve years of Olive’s life, the Dunwoodys had lived in many different towns, moving from apartment to apartment as Mr. and Mrs. Dunwoody moved from one mathematical job to another. When they had settled on Linden Street early that summer, Mr. and Mrs. Dunwoody were happy to think that at last they had a real house all to themselves.

But the truth was: They didn’t.

A trio of cats—Horatio, Leopold, and Harvey—had been keeping watch over the old stone house since long before the Dunwoodys arrived. Also hidden in its quiet rooms were a slew of sleepy neighbors, three stonemasons, a bouncy brown dog, several dancing girls in gauzy dresses, a café packed with Parisians, an out-of-practice orchestra, a castle porter, a woman in a bathtub, whole forests of trees, entire flocks of birds, and one small boy in a white nightshirt.

Mr. and Mrs. Dunwoody had no idea that they had so many roommates. But Olive knew. Thanks to a pair of spectacles she’d discovered in an upstairs drawer, Olive had learned the truth about the paintings that gleamed from the house’s cold stone walls.

Olive knew that Aldous McMartin, the house’s original owner, had been a very talented—very unusual—artist. Each painting he created was a living, changeless world, full of flowers that never wilted, and moons that never set, and people that could never die.

People like Aldous’s beloved granddaughter, Annabelle.

People like Aldous McMartin himself.

These painted worlds also made the perfect hiding place for everything Aldous wanted to conceal. Family spellbooks. Nosy neighbors. Dangerously curious almost-twelve-year-old girls who moved into your house and started unearthing all of its secrets.

Inside Aldous’s paintings, Olive had been chased by shadows, nearly drowned, and almost buried alive. She had survived each threat so far, but Olive didn’t know how much longer her good luck would hold. She’d already set the living image of Annabelle free, and worse still, she’d let Aldous’s final self-portrait slip through her fingers straight into his granddaughter’s cold, painted hands. As soon as Annabelle found a way to release him from the canvas, Olive’s luck would take a turn for the much, much worse.

Back in their college days, Mr. and Mrs. Dunwoody had invented a card game called 42—a more complicated version of 21—where each player tries to collect 42 points without going over. Sometimes, when Olive was really bored, her parents convinced her to play it with them, even though she never won. In her struggle with the McMartins, Olive felt as if she’d flipped one low card after another. Even if she didn’t exactly understand the mathematical rules of probability, Olive knew that a lucky streak couldn’t go on forever. Each good card brought a bad card closer. At any moment, the face of a chilly, smiling queen, or a stony, sunken-eyed king would stare up at her, and she would lose, yet again.

Compared to this very real fear, Halloween began to seem downright cheery.

So Olive had hung the cobwebs and put up the colored lights. She had cut out the cat silhouettes, modeling them on the house’s real (and much more talkative) cats. She had carved the jack-o’-lanterns with her parents, sitting on the porch in the October twilight. Mr. Dunwoody’s jack-o’-lantern was made up entirely of equilateral triangles. Mrs. Dunwoody’s jack-o’-lantern was made up of three scalene triangles and one complex quadrilateral. Olive’s jack-o’-lantern was made up of a jagged nose, two asymmetrical squinting eyes, and a crooked, snarling mouth, which disturbed her parents and the neighbors for entirely different reasons.

When she was finished decorating, Olive had stood at the curb looking up at her towering, terrifying house, and she’d felt a momentary zing of pride. For once, she might be the one getting to frighten someone else.

But being frightened wasn’t Olive’s real problem. Olive’s real problem was the feeling that—even with the cats and a few human friends, and all the painted people surrounding her—down at the very bottom, where the house’s worst secrets lived, she was...