A mysterious painting leads Marshall and Simon on the trail of an artist who learned how to put real life into her work.

In the Eerie Museum, Marshall and Simon admire a beautiful painting of a girl named Alice Prophet standing in a flower garden. But when they come back to look at it the next day, the lovely garden is now threatened by storm clouds, and Alice seems to be scared of a sinister shadow to one side. Nobody seems to notice except the boys! They find out that the real Alice Prophet learned how to put things from the real world into her paintings -- for good. The boys suspect that may have included Alice herself, now trapped inside her own painting.