Behind the Canvas (23 page)

She picked her way through wooden crates and furniture covered with drop cloths, stepping softly so as not to make a sound on the planked floor. Pim seemed certain no one was home, but still … She paused to glance at a horde of hideous gnomes with deformed faces cut from stone. A chill passed down her back. She climbed over an ancient printing press and bruised her shin against an anvil.

She arrived at the door, dust covering her hands and jeans. The wooden door was barely taller than she was, and the edges weren't square but came together at odd angles. A heap of junk pushed up against the bottom half of the door. She reached for the handle—an ugly brass gnome head with a tongue sticking out and eyes squeezed tight. Wincing at the thought of touching it, she took it in her fingers and twisted the knob.

The latch clicked and the door swung forcefully outward. Too late she realized that the weight of the rubbish by the door was leaning against it. She leaped to catch it, but a wooden crate toppled forward and crashed down the stairs, smashing glass plates and bowls in all directions. The echoing din faded to a tinkling as the pieces scattered down the wooden stairs and came to rest.

Claudia felt her heart stop. It didn't matter how big this house was—anyone, anywhere within its walls would have heard that. If Nee Gezicht was in the house, then the element of surprise had just been lost. Big-time.

Then she noticed she wasn't alone. At the bottom of the steep stairs, a few shards of glass surrounding it, was a cat. It was orange and enormous, with a sleek tail that whisked lazily from side to side. It looked up at Claudia with mismatched eyes, one white and scarred, the other green and glistening.

She hadn't seen it come into the stairwell. Had it been there before she opened the door? Or had her incredibly discreet entrance attracted it? Or did it just magically appear when needed to prevent intruders from coming and, say, stealing a staff?

The cat leaped to the first step, then the second. Scars gouged its beautiful coat in several places, and its spiked claws clacked on the wooden stairs.

Claudia hissed and flung her arms to shoo it away.

The cat tensed and growled low in its throat.

“Go on!” she whispered.

The cat snarled and leaped back. Then it turned and stared at her again with its wide, mismatched eyes before slinking around the corner.

She let the cat escape from sight before taking a deep breath and straining to hear any sound in the house below her. Silence. Pim said Nee Gezicht wasn't there—and he wouldn't be wrong about such a crucial part of the plan, right? She thought about the snarling cat again and her stomach twisted.

It's a
cat,
she told herself. She stepped forward.

Like the doorway out of the attic, the stairs were crooked—constructed at odd angles and varying sizes. It was like walking down a squarish, frozen waterfall. Her sneakers scuffed softly as they touched the wood, but the stairs didn't release a single creak.

The stairway led to a small windowless foyer. A pedestal rose up directly in front of her, topped by an old-fashioned black phone with a red lobster as a handset. The foyer branched off into three hallways with white walls and hardwood floors.

Walking past the bizarre phone (
Really? A lobster?
) she studied the hallways. They looked similar, and each angled off within a few paces, hiding their destinations. On the floor of the hallway to the left, however, were painted large blue human footprints.

Why footprints? Would they lead to the staff, or to someplace she didn't want to go? Or were they simply another oddity, like the uneven stairs and lobster phone?

At the moment, it was all she had to go on. She followed the footprints.

The hallway was dim, but there was enough light to see that the walls and ceiling were covered in ink drawings. Complex murals with scenery and creatures and people that went on and on, stretching the length of the twisted hallway like tattoos on the flesh of the house. It finally opened up into a living room, richly decorated and crammed with furniture.

Claudia pressed herself against the wall of the hallway and scanned the room. There was no sign of anyone. Or the cat. She moved quietly forward.

A large fireplace mantel, much taller than Claudia, marked the head of the room. But a brick wall stood where the logs and fire should have been, and from the bricks protruded the front end of a smoking steam engine. The smoke dissipated toward the ceiling, lending a soft haze to the entire room. It looked vaguely familiar—maybe something from an art book. The term
Surrealism
came to mind. She didn't know much about Surrealism, except that it was even stranger than Cubism, if that was possible.

A painting hung high on the wall above the fireplace mantel, portraying a distorted laughing face amid a wash of color. Its frame was formed by rough wooden boughs, like something you might see in a log cabin. Two plush couches stretched out across from each other in the center of the room. One was shaped like a dark, full pair of red lips. The other took the form of a hot dog, complete with mustard and pickle relish pillows.

Other bizarre decorations filled out the room. Marble figures with rearranged body parts. A bicycle wheel stuck upside down on a wooden stool. A solid metal clothes iron with spikes protruding from its flat surface. An old-fashioned potbellied stove in the corner almost looked normal compared to everything around it.

And I thought the world behind the canvas was weird
.

But there was no sign of the staff.

On the far wall hung a canvas in a glossy black frame. It held another portrait of Nee Gezicht, similar to the one in the attic but taller, almost touching the floor. Strange, since Pim had said there were only two paintings in the house. Claudia crossed the room for a closer look.

The detail and depth of the painting was incredible. Which master had painted this one? Perhaps Verspronck—Nee Gezicht looked about as young here as she did in the painting in the attic. Her golden hair was glossy and pulled up in intricate loops and braids around her head, each hair painted in fine detail. Her smooth skin had a soft glow, and her black silky gown flowed around her body like water. And the eyes …

Claudia gasped. The eye patch was gone. The witch's right eye was hard and cold and dark like the one in the attic painting. But the left eye was green, completely green, with a long slitted pupil, like a snake. Or a cat.

The cat on the stairs had eyes like that. Mismatched. There were others, too, weren't there? In the world behind the canvas? Yes … the Saint Bernard who had wanted to follow her and Cash. What else? The dragon? No … the bird, after the fight with the dragon. Its eyes were just like that. But why?

She stepped closer to the painting, transfixed by the eyes staring back at her in painted perfection.

The eyes blinked.

Claudia shrieked and stumbled backward. The painted Nee Gezicht grinned and swayed fluidly in the canvas. And then she stepped
forward
. Her black high-heeled boot passed over the frame, transforming from a painted canvas texture until it touched the floor. The other foot followed, and Nee Gezicht stood there in the flesh, her left hand clutching a straight staff of polished dark-yellow wood.

The staff came down to the floor with a cracking
thud
. The full gaze of her mismatched eyes turned on Claudia, who scrambled to her feet.

“Goedemorgen. Welkom op mijn huis.”
Nee Gezicht spoke the words with a slight bow and a grin, like a Dutch spider might to a fly.

Run! Run! Run!
Claudia's mind screamed the words. But to where? Could she really make it back through the attic before Nee Gezicht turned her into a … whatever?

“Spreek je Nederlands?”
the woman asked, her grin spreading wider.

“I don't speak D-Dutch,” Claudia stammered.

Nee Gezicht's eyebrows lifted slightly. “English. British?” She spoke with a strong accent and a condescending tone.

Claudia shook her head. “American.” She was reining in her mind, tamping out her panic as she might a fire in the grass. She couldn't run, so she'd have to make do with what she had … which wasn't much. At least now she knew where the staff was.

Nee Gezicht nodded. “Good. And tell me, child, how I came to have the privilege of your unexpected visit to my home.” The grin stayed on the woman's face.

“I…” Claudia forced a swallow. “I'm here on vacation with my parents. We're touring Holland. I thought this was a museum and just kind of let myself in.” She cringed inside. Even on a good day that would have sounded lame.

“A museum? How charming. What is your name, dear?”

“Claudia.” Again she cringed. Wasn't there something about not giving your real name away to a witch?

“And where are your parents?”

“Oh, they're outside. They're probably looking for me right now. I'm so sorry I came into your house without permission. I'll go now.” If she could get away from Nee Gezicht, perhaps there was a chance.… She glanced around the room, but the only exit was the hallway she had come through. At the entryway sat the large orange cat. It hissed a warning, and the hairs on the back of Claudia's neck told her to take it seriously.

I'm trapped
.

Nee Gezicht finally dropped her grin. “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” she chided with pursed lips. “You know, child, there was a time when all Dutch witches spoke only in rhyme to common folk and enemies, and in plain Dutch only to friends.” She sauntered over to a rolltop desk and produced a key from within the folds of her gown. “It wasn't hard to do, because in Dutch everything sounds like you're clearing your throat, so most everything rhymes. But I never could quite get the hang of it in English.” She slipped the key into the lock at the base of the tambour and turned it with a
click
.

“So tell me, Claudia, should I be speaking in rhyme with you?” Nee Gezicht lifted the handle of the tambour and rolled up the top of the desk.

There were eyes, lots of them. The desk held rows and rows of eyeballs, round and glistening, each sitting on a tiny saucer of fluid and lined up on racks like the spices in her mom's kitchen. As the tambour rolled back into the desk, the pupils collectively dilated.

Claudia choked on a cry.

Each of the eyeballs swiveled in unison in Claudia's direction. She had never felt so exposed before. Some of the eyeballs were distinctly human, while others were obviously from other creatures.

“Now, now, don't stare at our guest.” Nee Gezicht waved her hand at the contents of the desk, and some of the eyeballs looked away. She reached up to her slitted green eye. “You must excuse me, but it gets tiresome having the same one in for so long. I'm sure you understand.”

Nausea washed over Claudia and she stared at the floor.
Please don't throw up. Not here.

A sucking sound was followed by a
pop
. Claudia involuntarily looked up to see the witch placing the eyeball in a tiny vacant saucer on the rack. Nee Gezicht glanced in her direction, one eye white and alert, the other closed and sunken. She turned back to the rack.

“Let me see…” Nee Gezicht's hand hovered over the rows of eyes, as though divining which would suit her best. Finally she selected one that was orange and wide, and she brought it carefully to her face.

Claudia looked away again.

“You will find it very useful, child”—
pop, squish
—“to be able to see things others can't. Vision is a glorious device.”

Nee Gezicht blinked several times and flashed a smile at Claudia both sweet and malicious, like a poisoned kiss.

“For example,” she continued, “even though I was a thousand miles away, I saw you step out of my attic.”

The cat in the entryway hissed again. So Claudia's gut feeling about the cat had been right.

“Well, I…”

“This house is protected from the outside by a dozen different enchantments, making it impossible for tourists or anyone else to wander, break, or force their way in. And your hand holds the faint, glistening residue of canvas-crossing ointment, which, I admit, I haven't seen for decades.”

Claudia glanced at her hand. Perhaps there was a faint shimmer.

“Now, the painting above the mantel cannot be crossed; I saw to that a long time ago. And my personal doorway”—she gestured to the empty painting she had stepped through—“can only be crossed by me.” Nee Gezicht placed both hands on her staff and leaned gently forward. “So why don't you tell me, Claudia, how you came into my house. And why.”

Claudia was at the end of her rope. However fast she ran, either the witch or the wild cat would get her before she could make it to the painting in the attic.

Despair filled her, as if the Fireside Angel were howling in her ear.

“Oh!” Nee Gezicht exclaimed. “My old portrait. You must have come through that old portrait. Is it still stashed away in the mess up there?”

Claudia's thoughts whipped through her mind.

What do you need?

I need to get that staff and get out of this house. If not through a painting, then at least through the front door.

What does Nee Gezicht want?

She wants wills. Other people's wills make her stronger. The wills of
Artisti
.

What should you do?

Be normal. Boring. Not a threat and certainly not interesting.

Dang it. You've never been any good at being normal.

Claudia focused again on the elegant woman in the black dress and cleared her throat. Her mind raced to recall what Cash had said about a poker face. Shoulders relaxed. Concentrate on your breathing. No nervous tics.

“Yes, you're right,” Claudia said. “I have a friend. She says she's a kind of witch. She makes her magic through art. Or so she said. I didn't believe her. So she gave me this potion and told me to put it on my hand and then put it against a painting and it would take me to a whole new world. And it worked! It was amazing! I came back to find the painting I'd come through, and I thought it was the one in your attic. But … I guess not. I'm really sorry to bother you.”