The Secret of the Painted House (4 page)

Then Emily understood. Of course! Pin had died in a fire. She must be afraid of fires. Even a little campfire scared her.

So Emily held her marshmallow over the tepee of sticks. She was already pretending the painted marshmallow was real. She could pretend there was a fire.

Pin did the same.

The silence was so heavy it made Emily’s ears hurt.

“Do you live here in the playhouse?” she asked finally.

Pin seemed surprised. “No, of course not! My dad’s house is over there.” She waved a hand in the direction Emily had come from.

A shiver ran beneath Emily’s skin.

“And your mother?” she asked. She kept her voice calm. She pretended this was a normal conversation.

“She’s here. She went away once. But she’s here now.” Pin said it fiercely. She seemed to think Emily might argue.

“Have you seen her?” Emily asked.

Pin shrugged. “She plays hide-and-seek. She loves hide-and-seek. Only”—her voice caught—“I can never find her.”

A sudden cramp brought Emily’s hand
across her stomach. She looked around. What was that flash of red she had seen in the woods earlier?

Was Pin’s mother somewhere inside this picture? But why wouldn’t she let Pin see her?

Pin’s voice brought Emily back. “You’ll stay, won’t you?” It was half question, half demand.

Emily didn’t know how to answer. She pulled the marshmallow off her stick. And then she held it, amazed. The marshmallow had puffed and toasted to a light brown. And it had done that over an imaginary fire!

It was as if someone had painted it anew.

But Pin wasn’t paying any attention. “You’ve
got
to stay!” she said. It was an order this time.

“I—I can’t,” Emily stammered. She was
still staring at the toasted marshmallow. “My mother … We just moved here, and you see … I … I have to help her.”

The moment she said it, she knew it was a mistake. She should have found another excuse.

She could have said, again, that her little brother was waiting. She could even have said that she had to go home to her father. That would have been okay. But she never should have mentioned her mother.

“Well.” Pin’s voice was hard. “I wouldn’t want to keep you from your mommy.”

Emily’s cheeks grew hot. She scrambled to her feet. She still held the marshmallow. It didn’t matter what Pin said. This girl couldn’t keep her here.

She turned to go. To her surprise, Pin was right in front of her. She had been sitting by
the unlit fire. Now she stood in Emily’s path. How had she moved so fast?

Pin didn’t say anything. She just stood blocking Emily’s way. Her face looked fierce.

“I told you.” Emily started around Pin. “I’ve got to go.”

“You can’t go.” There Pin was in front of her again.

“What do you mean? I can’t go?” Emily was so amazed she almost forgot to be scared.

“I mean, you’re in my world now. You have to stay.”

Emily’s scalp prickled. Was it possible? Once she came into the picture, was there no way out?

Still, she said, “I don’t
have
to do anything!” The words came out sounding braver than she felt.

She stepped in another direction. Pin was right there again. How could she get away from her?

“Move!” Emily ordered.

Pin didn’t. But she didn’t look angry now.
She just looked sad. “I need you,” she said. Her voice was soft, pleading. “I need … someone. I get so lonely waiting for my mom to come back.”

“But I don’t want to stay here,” Emily told her.

Pin shrugged. Clearly she didn’t care what Emily wanted.

Emily tried once more to step around her. It didn’t work.

“Emily!”

Emily caught her breath. The voice came from far away.

It was Logan! It had to be Logan. She must go to him.

“I’m coming!” Emily called. “Logan, I’ll be right there.”

She began to run. She didn’t try to step around Pin. She just ran straight ahead.
And suddenly Pin wasn’t in front of her.

Had she managed to run past the girl? Or had she blasted right through her? She didn’t have any idea.

She kept running.

The grass caught at her feet. She almost tripped over a tree root. Suddenly the ground was rough.

Birds chirped overhead.

The air stirred around her.

Emily looked down at her hand. She still held the marshmallow. Or it had been a marshmallow.

Now, white paint oozed between her fingers. White paint faintly tinted with brown.

E
mily couldn’t hear Logan calling anymore. She kept running all the same. At the stream, she didn’t bother looking for the stones. She just splashed across it. She came to the clearing.

This was where she had left Logan picking flowers. She knew it was the place. But he was gone.

The grass was trampled. Most of the
violets were beheaded. But her brother wasn’t here.

“Logan!” she called.

There was no answer.

“Logan!” she yelled again, even more loudly.

Still silence.

Where had he gone? Back home? Would he know his way back home?

She started up the hill. She would check at the house first.

But then she stopped. What if he wasn’t there? What would she say to her mother?

If she went back without Logan, what would Mom say to her?

Emily turned down the hill again. He had probably tried to follow her, anyway. She retraced her steps.

Back at the playhouse, she didn’t see any
trace of her brother. And he had stopped calling.

The playhouse looked the same. The lock still held the door closed. The broken window gaped. Inside, painted trees covered the walls. She could see no sign that Logan had been here.

The idea of going in again made her skin crawl. But what if Logan was in there? What if Pin had taken
him
inside the picture? She would try to trap him. Emily knew she would. She would keep him forever.

The girl had said she was lonely. She wanted someone. Probably even a four-year-old would do.

Emily ducked through the window. Her sneakers crunched across the glass.

“Logan,” she called softly. And then a little more loudly. “Logan!”

She heard him again. “Emileeee!”

Or she thought she heard him. The call was so faint she might have imagined it. It seemed to come from far away.

Where was he? Was he outside in the woods? Or was he inside the playhouse wall? How could she tell?

Emily stepped outside again. She ran from tree to tree. She heard “Emileeee” again. But the call sounded even farther away.

She stopped, holding on to the trunk of a tree. She stood still and listened. If Logan was out here in the real woods, she would hear him. He would rustle the leaves. He would snap a twig. Maybe he’d stub his toe on a root.

She heard nothing. The only sound was the light whisper of a summer breeze through the leaves.

Emily went back to the playhouse. She climbed through the window again. What choice did she have?

She couldn’t leave Logan alone with that girl. She couldn’t let her brother be lost inside a picture!

Emily stopped in front of the painted
picnic and studied it carefully. Had anything changed?

She could see the unlit campfire. She could see the food on the red and white cloth. The hot dogs, the mustard, the potato salad. She could see everything except the marshmallows. The marshmallows were gone. Every single one was gone.

Logan loved marshmallows!

“Emileeee!” The voice was still distant, but closer this time. It must be coming from inside the picture! She had no choice. She had to go in again.

But how had she done it before?

Emily moved close to the wall. She moved so close that when she raised her arms, her fingers almost brushed the surface. Then she closed her eyes and stepped forward.

She expected to bump into the wall. But
she didn’t. She took another step. Then another.

When she opened her eyes, she saw trees everywhere. Painted trees. And all was silent again.

She took a deep breath. She’d done it! She was inside the picture once more.

But where was Logan?

E
mily looked in the woods. She checked behind every tree. She looked under a weeping willow. She climbed over a pile of rocks. She couldn’t find Logan.

Finally, she tried the playhouse door. The handle turned. The door swung open. She peeked in. Again, this playhouse was perfect. There was no broken glass on the floor. There was no Logan, either.

She walked to the wall on the opposite side. The picture was the same. It was the woods and another playhouse. The picnic lay beside it. The campfire was unlit. There were no marshmallows.

Then Emily looked more closely. The hot dogs were there. The mustard and pickles were, too. But the ketchup was gone.

Logan was a funny kid. He didn’t like hot dogs, but he loved ketchup. Once Mom had caught him drinking it right from the bottle.

Clearly he had been here. Pin must have taken him into the wall twice. Maybe more.

Emily sighed. She squeezed her eyes shut and stepped forward. She didn’t even lift her arms to protect herself. She just stepped. Then she kept on stepping.

When she opened her eyes, she was standing in the woods.

“Logan!” she called. She got no answer. These woods were much quieter than the real woods. No breeze stirred. No squirrels rustled through the leaves. No birds sang.

Why hadn’t Pin’s mother painted squirrels and birds? This place needed a little life. But if she had painted them, would they have come alive?

Emily shuddered. She didn’t want to think about things like that.

She called again. “Logan!”

Would she have to go inside the playhouse and do it all over? How many pictures had he gone through? If they kept going deeper, would it be harder to get back?

That was something else she didn’t want to think about.

So she didn’t. She just opened the door and walked back inside the playhouse. She came
over to the picnic in the wall again. This time the mustard bottle had been tipped over. It oozed yellow onto the cloth.

“Logan!”

She stopped to listen. Was that someone calling her name? She wasn’t sure.

She closed her eyes and pushed through the wall.

And then when Logan wasn’t there, she did it again. And again.

Once she caught a flash of red disappearing behind a tree. She had seen that red dress before. She heard a mournful voice, too.

“Sorry!” it moaned. “I’m sorry.”

But Emily didn’t care about anyone in red. And she didn’t care about anyone being sorry, either. Logan was wearing blue. And Logan was never sorry for anything.

She went through the wall again.

She had begun to lose count. Had she gone through eight times or nine? More?

She spotted something blue. One of Logan’s sneakers lay on the ground.

“Logan!” she yelled. She had been trying to stay calm. But she wasn’t calm anymore. Her voice cracked.

Her little brother was a pain sometimes. Still … what would she do if anything happened to him?

And then … there he was, right in front of her. He was chewing on a ketchup sandwich. She could tell that’s what it was. Ketchup had dripped onto his shirt.

The food here must be real if you stayed inside the picture. Emily hated to think how that sandwich would taste back in the real world.

“Hi, Emily,” Logan said. He said it as if
meeting inside a picture were the most normal thing in the world.

He held out the sandwich for her to see. His hands were grimy. The bread was smushed. The ketchup oozed through. “Look,” he said. “I’m having a picnic with Pin.”