The Books of Elsewhere, Vol. 1: The Shadows Read Free Page B

the stone. The dryer chuffed away in the corner. Its hum echoed through the empty space.
    Olive yanked the chain of the first lightbulb. Fresh shadows swooped in around her. She backed up to the second lightbulb. Click . More shadows flooded the room, leaving just the glow of the light over the stairs. Olive went up the steps backward this time, determined that whatever was down there in the dark couldn’t sneak up behind her. Reaching the top of the staircase, she switched off the final light. There!—something flickered in the corner. Something green and bright. Something that looked like a pair of eyes.
    Making a sound halfway between a squeak and a gasp, Olive skidded backward into the kitchen, slammed the basement door, and ran all the way up to her bedroom, where Hershel calmly waited on the pillows.

4
     
    O LIVE HAD TROUBLE getting to sleep that night.
    For a while, she thought she was sleeping, but then she opened her eyes and saw that the minute column on the digital clock had only gone up by three. Olive sighed. She punched the pillows. She kicked her legs under the bedspread so that it billowed up like a parachute. She listened to the distant sound of her parents talking between the busy clicking of computer keys.
    Olive tried counting sheep, but she got lost around forty-two. Olive had never been good at counting. While learning to count to one hundred, she had always skipped the eighties completely. She had gone straight from seventy-nine to ninety while her parents had exchanged aggrieved looks above her head.
    “I give up,” she said to Hershel, holding him high in the air above her. His black bead eyes caught the dim sheen of streetlights through the windows. “I’m not even going to try to fall asleep. I’ll just lie here, wide-awake, all night long.”
    She turned on her side so she could look out of the window. There wasn’t much to see. The gauzy curtains stirred in a slight breeze, the branches of the willow tree swayed, and a gigantic orange cat pushed up the window frame and squeezed its body through.
    Olive sat up. The cat stood for a moment, sniffing at the air. Then it trotted soundlessly across the room, examining the furniture with careful solemnity.
    “Here, kitty, kitty,” whispered Olive.
    The cat ignored her. It moved away from the dresser toward the vanity, hopping up onto the cushioned chair.
    “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,” Olive whispered more loudly.
    The cat was now looking into the vanity mirror. Its reflected green eyes glanced at Olive for a split second. “That’s not my name,” it said. Then the cat looked back at its mirror image and ran one paw delicately over its nose. “Gorgeous,” it murmured.
    Half of Olive’s brain said, That cat just talked! The other half of Olive’s brain said stubbornly, No it didn’t. All Olive’s mouth said was, “What?”

     
    “I said, ‘That’s not my name,’” the cat repeated somewhat scornfully.
    “But everybody calls a cat that way,” said Olive.
    “What if I called you girly ? ‘Here, girly, girly, girly.’ Rather insulting, isn’t it?”
    “I’m sorry,” said Olive. “I won’t do it again.”
    “Thank you.” The cat gave her a slight but gracious nod before turning its attention back to its own reflection.
    “What is your name?” Olive asked tentatively.
    The cat stood up and stretched itself. Its orange fur puffed and settled on its back, and its tail, as thick as a baseball bat, twitched above its head. “My name is Horatio,” he said with great dignity. “And you are?”
    “Olive Dunwoody. We just moved here.”
    “Yes, I know.” The cat turned his wide orange face toward Olive. Then he leaped down onto the rug. Olive half expected a cat that size to make a crash like a dropped bowling ball, but he landed with surprising lightness. The cat trotted to the end of Olive’s bed and sat, looking up at her. “I suppose you plan to stay for a while.”
    “Well—yes. My mom and dad said they want