Free The Books of Elsewhere, Vol. 1: The Shadows by Jacqueline West

the gate swayed back and forth.
    “And,” said Olive, “I brought you this.” She put down the crayons and coloring book and pulled a miniature flashlight out of her pocket.
    “What is it?”
    Olive flicked the flashlight on. A narrow beam of light poked through the dusk and tickled a few of the distant houses.
    Morton gasped. He slid off of the gate. Like somebody watching a magic trick, he tiptoed closer to Olive, his mouth hanging open.
    “How does it work?” he whispered.
    “There’s a battery inside it.”
    “There’s batter in it? Like cake batter?”
    “No, a battery. It’s . . . it’s a little thing that makes things work,” said Olive, hoping Morton wouldn’t ask any follow-up questions. “But it doesn’t last forever. So don’t turn it on too often.”
    “Can I hold it?” asked Morton. Olive passed him the flashlight, and Morton twirled around with it, making swirls of gold light against the low-hanging fog.
    “Look, I’m a soldier!” he crowed, assuming a stiff position, the beam pointing up from his side like a sword. “Charge!” Head down, flashlight out, Morton barreled toward Olive, who laughed and leaped out of the light.
    Morton skidded to a stop. “Now what am I?” He held the flashlight above his head with both hands and turned in place, very slowly.
    “An angel on a merry-go-round?”
    “Nope. I’m a lighthouse.” Morton swung the flashlight in one hand, its glow making a sparkling trail through the mist. “I can write our names. Look.” Morton aimed the flashlight toward the low, dark clouds. “M-O-R-T-O-N and O-L-I-V-E,” he spelled softly, tracing letters that vanished as quickly as they formed.
    “You’d better turn it off. Don’t waste the battery.”
    Morton gave the street a last slow swipe with the flashlight beam, and the soft colors of the houses and lawns flickered at the end of its thin, bright tunnel. Then he let Olive show him how to push the switch. The light disappeared. The street was dark and silent, and somehow emptier than before.
    Morton sighed and looked down at the sleeping flashlight. “When can I come out?” he said softly.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I want to go home.”
    “But you said this was your house.”
    “I mean my REAL house. Not in here. The REAL one. I told you, I was in my BED. And I woke up, and he was talking to THAT CAT, and—”
    “I know, I know,” Olive interrupted. “But Morton, in the real world, this house belongs to somebody else. It’s Mrs. Nivens’s house. It’s not yours.”
    “Nivens?” said Morton, staring up at Olive.
    “Besides, you’re not real. You are a painting .”
    Morton’s round face folded into a frown. “I am not!”
    “Look.” Olive grabbed Morton’s spindly wrist and flapped his hand through the air. “Paint. Now look at my hand. See the difference?”
    Morton shook his head stubbornly.
    With her fingers still wrapped around Morton’s wrist, Olive noticed something else—something that she didn’t feel. “Morton, you don’t have a pulse.”
    “I do SO have a pulse!” Morton jumped so he could stomp both bare feet at once.
    “You’re made of paint!” Olive insisted. “Why would you have blood or organs at all? You can’t have a pulse if you don’t even have a heart.”
    Morton scowled at Olive. Then he turned his head to one side and craned his neck toward his armpit. He turned to the other side and craned again.
    “What are you doing?” asked Olive.
    “I’m trying to hear my heart.”
    “You can’t get your ear to your own chest,” said Olive. “Here.” She dropped to her knees and pressed her ear against Morton’s rib cage. And it was funny—there was a rib cage there, beneath his baggy white nightshirt, exactly like you would expect a real, live, scrawny boy to have. But there was no sound of breathing. And there was definitely no heartbeat.
    “I told you,” said Olive. “Nothing.”
    Morton balled his hands into fists. “I don’t believe