The Secret of the Painted House Read online

  “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?

  8

  A Flash of Red

  Emily 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.”

  Emily hadn’t even noticed Pin. She sat near Logan, grinning. But this time her grin didn’t look friendly.

  All Emily’s worry burst out as anger. She grabbed Logan’s arms and shook him. She shook him so hard he dropped the sandwich.

  “What do you mean,” she yelled, “running off like that? You could have been lost. Don’t you know you could have been lost?”

  Logan’s face puckered. His chin quivered. Tears brimmed. “I didn’t run off,” he said. “I was looking for you. Pin said she knew where you were.”

  Emily turned on Pin instead. “Inside the playhouse? Inside playhouse after playhouse after playhouse? That’s where you were looking for me?”

  Pin shrugged. Her shrug was slow and lazy. It made Emily even more angry.

  “You found us, didn’t you?” Pin said.

  Who did this girl think she was, anyway? Emily stepped closer so that they stood almost nose to nose. “Why did you kidnap my brother?” she demanded.

  Logan tugged on her shirt. “It’s all right, Emily,” he said. “Pi
n didn’t ’nap me. I didn’t take a nap at all.”

  “Oh, Logan!” Emily cried. She scooped her little brother into her arms and hugged him tight.

  She spoke past him to the girl. “We’re going back. And you’re not going to stop us.”

  Again, that slow shrug. Pin’s shoulders rose almost to her ears, then dropped again. “Okay,” she said. Her grin grew wider. “But how?”

  That stopped Emily. How had she done it before?

  She had just … She had just gone, hadn’t she? She’d closed her eyes—

  Wait. Had she closed her eyes? She had closed her eyes when she’d gone through the wall. But not when she left Pin. She’d just blasted through. Through Pin. Through the trees. Through all the fake stuff in this silly picture.

  Could she do that again? She was much deeper inside the picture now.

  Emily took a step forward. Logan was heavy. She couldn’t run holding him.

  Pin stood off at one side, watching. Her mean grin had faded. But she had an I-know-something-you-don’t look.

  Emily set Logan down. “We’ll go inside the playhouse,” she told Pin. “We’ll just go back through the wall.”

  Pin nodded as if she agreed with the plan. But she said, “Then you’ll be even deeper inside.”

  Emily’s scalp prickled. Pin was right. That was how she had gotten here. She had gone through wall after wall after wall. But how could they go through a wall backward?

  Emily wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to hit that smug girl standing there with her smug face in her smug sailor’s dress.

  “Would you like a ketchup sandwich?” Pin asked.

  Emily started to say “No!” She definitely, certainly, absolutely did not want a ketchup sandwich. But a thought stopped her. Where had the bread come from?

  There had been no bread in the picture before. Only hot dogs. And ketchup and mustard and marshmallows.

  In one picture there had been graham crackers and chocolate bars for s’mores, too. But they had come later. Those things weren’t in the first picture.

  And that was when Emily put it together. Pin had said her mother was here. And Emily herself had seen someone in a red dress. Twice she had seen her. Emily had heard her say “Sorry,” too.

  So Pin’s mother must be here. At least she was in one of the layers of the wall. She must have come back after she died.

  And she was the reason the marshmallows had “toasted,” too. She had made the bread appear as well. She was using the artist’s palette and brush. The ones she had painted into the picture.

  Pin’s mother was changing the picture from inside. That was her way of saying she was sorry she had left Pin. But she was afraid to face the girl she had left so long ago.

  If they found Pin’s mother … If Pin wasn’t alone anymore, she wouldn’t need to keep Emily and Logan here. Maybe she’d even help them find their way out!

  “Pin,” she said, “I’ve got an idea.”

  9

  Fire!

  “What kind of an idea?” Pin asked. She wasn’t smiling any longer.

  “You know what you said before about your mother?”

  “What?” Pin sounded cross. She didn’t seem to like talking about her mother. “What did I say?”

  “You said she’s here. But she’s playing hide-and-seek. You can never find her?”

  “Y-e-a-h-h-h.” Pin drew the word out. She was clearly waiting to see where Emily was going.

  “Well, what if Logan and I help you look for her? If we all look together, I’m sure we’ll find her.”

  Pin tugged on the red tie of her sailor dress. “My mother’s been gone for a long, long time,” she said. “Since before—”

  She stopped. She didn’t say before what. But Emily knew. Since before Pin had burned her father’s house.

  Emily stepped closer. “Did your mother like to wear red?”

  Pin looked surprised. And then she looked as if she might burst into tears. She nodded. “She painted herself into the picture … the same time she painted me. She was mostly behind a tree. But you could see her red dress. It was my favorite. She wore it the day she—” She stopped, caught her breath.

  “The day she went away?” Emily said softly.

  Again, Pin nodded.

  “Then I think I’ve seen her. Just a little while ago. Over there!” Emily pointed toward the trees where she had seen the flash of red.

  Pin turned slowly to look where Emily pointed. “Over there?” she asked. She spoke softly, her voice filled with awe. Emily might have said she’d seen an angel in the trees.

  She turned back to Emily. “Red? You said she was wearing red?”

  Emily nodded. “And she said she was sorry. I heard her say she was sorry.”

  “Sorry?”

  “For leaving you. I’m sure she’s sorry for leaving you.”

  “Oh,” Pin said. “Then let’s—” Suddenly she went pale. Her gaze was caught by something behind Emily. She looked … well, the truth was she looked like a ghost! Or as if she’d just seen one.

  “No!” Pin cried. Her hands flew up to cover her face. “No! Don’t!”

  Emily whirled to see what was wrong.

  Logan! She hadn’t been watching him. She’d been thinking about Pin’s mother instead. He was squatting in front of the tepee of sticks. The sticks had waited years and years for a fire, but no more.

  Logan must have had matches in his pocket again. And while Emily and Pin had been talking, he’d taken them out. He had struck one of them.

  Flames licked at the sticks.

  “Logan!” Emily cried.

  He looked up. Guilt smeared his face like jam.

  The bright flame leapt higher.

  “Get away from there!” Emily cried. She ran, grabbed Logan’s arm, and pulled him to her.

  But even as she pulled Logan away, Pin began to scream. “Fire!” she yelled. “Help! Fire!”

  Emily looked from Pin to the fire and back to Pin again. It was a very small fire. It was a small fire with nothing close by that would catch. And Logan hadn’t been hurt. There was nothing to get so excited about.

  “Pin,” Emily said. “Don’t—” But Pin was already running. She was running away.

  Emily and Logan stood watching. “Look!” Logan said. He leaned against Emily’s side. He slipped a thumb into his mouth. “Wook!” he said again around the thumb.

  Emily looked. A woman in a red dress had come out from behind one of the trees. She stood waiting, her arms open.

  Sobbing, Pin ran into them.

  From where they stood, Emily couldn’t hear what the woman was saying. Somehow her heart could hear, though. “Hush,” her heart heard. “Hush! It’s all right. I’m here.”

  “Is that Pin’s mommy?” Logan asked.

  Emily could only nod, her throat tight.

  For a long moment, neither Logan nor Emily moved. They just stood there, leaning into one another, watching. Pin’s mother stroked Pin’s hair and crooned to her. And Pin sobbed. But it wasn’t unhappy crying. The tears seemed like pure joy.

  Finally, the pair turned and moved away, holding hands.

  When Emily saw they were really going, she caught her breath. “Wait!” she called. “Wait! You can’t leave us here.” She started after them.

  She had gone only a few steps when they disappeared. They simply vanished among the trees. They had never even bothered to look back.

  Emily turned to her brother. He gazed up at her with trusting eyes.

  Poor little kid! He didn’t understand that they were in trouble. Pin was all right now, but nothing had changed for them. They were still trapped inside this picture. And Emily didn’t have any idea how they would get out.

  She took hold of Logan’s small, grimy hand. “Don’t be scared, Logan,” she said.

  “I’m not,” he replied cheerfully.

  Emily sighed. Of course he wasn’t scared. He didn’t understand. He probably didn’t even understand how strange it was
to step inside a picture. Little kids thought that whatever happened was just the way the world was meant to be.

  She squeezed Logan’s hand. She had never felt so alone. She hadn’t liked Pin all that much. But she liked being alone in Pin’s painted world even less.

  “I want to go home,” Logan said.

  “Me too,” Emily answered. But her feet seemed to be glued to the ground. She had no idea what to do.

  “Emily?” Logan sounded impatient. In a few minutes he’d probably start whining. Then he’d move on to tears.

  “I’m thinking!” she told him. “Just let me think!”

  But he wasn’t letting her do anything. He tugged on her hand. He pulled her toward the campfire. Why was he so proud of that darned fire? He knew he wasn’t supposed to be playing with matches.

  Already the flames had begun to sputter and die back. It had never been much of a fire.

  “I want to go home!” Logan said again. And this time he broke away and ran toward the fire.

  And that’s when Emily saw it. The flames had burned a hole in the picture. The hole was big enough for a child to climb through. It was big enough for two children to climb through.

  The paint was black and bubbled around the edges. On the other side of the hole, a squirrel scolded. Leaves rustled in a light summer breeze. Emily had never heard anything so beautiful in all her life!

  Thank you, Logan, she thought. And she hopped over the dying embers and followed her little brother into their own world.

  Emily and Logan walked side by side through the woods. Neither of them spoke. They splashed across the stream. They crossed the clearing where Logan had collected violets. Emily even picked up the bunch of wilting flowers she found dropped at the edge of the clearing. Then they climbed the hill.

  They came to the place where the trees stopped and the circle of houses began.

  “Let’s go help Mama,” Emily said to Logan. She ran her fingers through his tangled curls. “Then after lunch and after your nap, I know something fun we can do.”

  “What?” Logan asked. “What can we do, Emily?”

  “We can play in the forest creek,” she told him. “What do you think about that?”