House of Secrets

by Chris Columbus

  “No it didn’t!”

  “Let it go. You’re scared.”

  “Not as scared as you,” said Eleanor, moving Brendan’s hand away and pointing at the sweaty spot he had left on her shoulder. Before Brendan could protest, another hand reached out from behind and grabbed his neck.

  “Help!” Brendan screamed, whirling around and shoving with all his might.

  “Oof!” His father hit the ground.

  “Jeez, Bren, what’s the matter with you?” said Dr. Walker, hoisting himself to his feet and rubbing his tailbone.

  “Dad! Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

  “Come on. Mom and Diane are waiting for you guys. We’re going to check out the inside of the house.”

  The Walkers followed their father. Brendan felt a chill breeze as he approached the door with the 128 on it—but then again, the house was half off a cliff. The stone angel had so fascinated him that he’d almost failed to notice: The far side of Kristoff House was supported by metal stilts anchored in boulders far below on the beach. And hanging under the house were dozens of barrels.

  “What are those . . . ?” Brendan started to ask as he entered.

  But he was silenced by the sheer beauty of the interior. Mrs. Walker, too, was amazed; she had totally dropped negotiation mode. She was busy ogling antiques and checking her reflection in polished banisters. Dr. Walker let out a low whistle. Cordelia said, “Wow, you could call this a great hall and not even be ironic.”

  “You are indeed standing in the front or ‘great’ hall,” Diane said. “The interior has been impeccably restored, but the previous owners kept the original touches. Not bad for a termite-infested bear habitat, huh?”

  Cordelia blushed. The room was filled with red-on-black and black-on-red Greek pottery (Reproductions, Cordelia thought, because the originals would be priceless), a cast-iron coatrack with curlicues, and a marble bust of a man with a wavy beard, which screamed philosopher. All of it was lit by track fixtures, like in a museum. Brendan wondered how it was possible, but the place seemed twice as big inside as it looked from outside.

  “This house was built for entertaining, from the time it was constructed,” Diane said with a wide sweep of her hand.

  “Who entertained here?” Cordelia asked.

  “Lady Gaga,” deadpanned Brendan, trying to hide his unease. First no For Sale sign, then a creepy statue, now a house with an antiques store inside . . .

  “Bren,” Mrs. Walker warned.

  Diane went on: “No one’s had a party here for years. The previous owners were a family who paid for the restoration. They lived here briefly but wanted a change. Moved to New York.”

  “And before that?” Brendan asked.

  “Unoccupied for decades. Some of the cosmetic touches fell into disrepair, but you know these old houses were built to last. In fact, this one was built to float!”

  “What?” Brendan asked.

  “Are you kidding?” said Cordelia.

  “The original owner, Mr. Kristoff, wanted to make sure his house would survive an earthquake like the one he’d just been through. So he underslung the foundation with air-filled barrels. If the Big One comes and the house falls off the cliff, it’s designed to hit the ocean and drift away.”

  “That is so cool,” said Eleanor.

  “No, it’s absurd,” said her father.

  “On the contrary, Dr. Walker—they’re doing it now with homes built in the Netherlands. Mr. Kristoff was ahead of his time.”

  Diane led the Walkers into the living room, which had a stunning view of the Golden Gate Bridge. That didn’t seem right to Brendan—he thought it was on the opposite side of the house—but then he realized that they had turned around, doubling back from the great hall. Crystal vases, alabaster sculptures, and a mounted suit of armor had distracted him . . . and so had the stone angel he knew was out there, reaching forth her broken hand and staring with mossy eyes.

  The living room had a Chester chair, a glass coffee table with driftwood for legs, and a Steinway piano. “Is the furniture for sale?” Mrs. Walker asked.

  “Everything’s for sale.” Diane smiled. “It’s all included in the purchase price.”

  She moved on with the Walkers—except Brendan, who lingered by the view of the bridge. Growing up in San Francisco he’d gotten used to seeing it every day, but from this angle, so close he was almost beneath it, the bridge’s salmon color struck him as unnatural. He wondered what the house’s original owner, Mr. Kristoff, had thought of the bridge when it was first constructed. Because if the house was built in 1907—Brendan’s mind quickly accessed dates and facts—then it was standing thirty years before the bridge did, and the view back then would have simply been a great expanse of ocean, framed by two giant rocky outcroppings. Was Mr. Kristoff dead by the time the bridge went up?

  “Hello?” Brendan suddenly asked, realizing he was alone. He rushed out of the living room to find Diane and his family.

  Meanwhile, Cordelia was thinking about Mr. Kristoff too. She’d heard that name before but couldn’t think where. It taunted her as she entered the next room, which she knew by smell alone: dust, musty pages, and old ink.

  “Welcome to the library,” Diane said.

  It was stunning. A vaulted ceiling spanned books stacked on mahogany shelves that reached all the way up the walls. Two ladders ran on casters to enable access to the shelves. Between them, a massive oak table lined with green-glassed bankers’ lamps split the room. A few gleaming dust motes circled the table like birds on updrafts.

  Cordelia absolutely had to see what books were on the shelves. She always did. She poked her nose up to the nearest one and realized where she’d heard of Mr. Kristoff.

  Cordelia could read anywhere. She had been reading on the car ride to 128 Sea Cliff Avenue even though she was sandwiched between her siblings going up and down San Francisco hills with a dyslexic in charge of the GPS. “Losing yourself in a book is the best,” her mother always said, and Cordelia had a feeling her grandmother had said the same thing to Bellamy as a young girl.

  Cordelia had started early, embarrassing her parents in a fancy restaurant at age four by reading a newspaper over an old lady’s shoulder, causing the woman to shout, “That baby is reading!” As she got older, she moved on to her parents’ collection of Western literature: the Oxford Library of the World’s Great Books, with their thick leather spines. Now she was into more obscure authors, people whose books she had to find in first editions or old paperbacks with names like Brautigan and Paley and Kosinski. The more obscure the better. She felt that if she read a writer that no one she knew had heard of, she kept him or her alive single-handedly, like intellectual CPR. At school she got in trouble for sneaking books inside her textbooks (though Ms. Kavanaugh never minded). In the last year she’d discovered a man whom Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft had cited as an influence, quite prolific, who’d written adventure novels in the early twentieth century.

  “‘Denver Kristoff,’” she read from a book’s spine. “Diane, the Kristoff who built this house was Denver Kristoff, the writer?”

  “That’s right. You’ve heard of him?”

  “Never read, definitely heard of. His books don’t even show up on eBay. Fantasy, science fiction . . . instrumental in the work of the people who later invented Conan the Barbarian and our modern idea of the zombie. Never got much critical acclaim—”

  She had to stop speaking because of Brendan’s exaggerated gagging.

  “Will you stop that?”

  “Sorry, I’m allergic to book geeks.”

  “Dad, we could be living in the home of a well-known obscure writer!”

  “I’ll take that under advisement.”

  Diane led the family out of the library (Dr. Walker practically had to drag Cordelia) and presented a pristine kitchen, the most modern room they had seen so far. New appliances glittered under a sprawling skylight. It looked like a place germs would be afraid to enter. An impressive array of knives,
in order from smallest to largest, hung magnetically over the stove. Eleanor asked, “Can we make cookies here?”

  “Sure,” Dr. Walker said.

  “Can we make only cookies here?”

  “Viking, Electrolux, Sub-Zero,” Diane checked off, leading the family past the stainless steel double-doored fridge. Brendan wondered if there might be something weird inside it, like a head, so he peeked . . . but he didn’t see anything more disturbing than clinical emptiness.

  Diane took the Walkers upstairs. The contemporary décor of the kitchen was instantly lost in a spiral wooden staircase that Eleanor insisted on climbing up and down and up again. The spiral stairs were wider than any the Walkers had ever seen; they served as the main stairs between the first and second floors. Upstairs, a broad hallway ran the length of the house, ending at a bay window and another, smaller staircase that led back down to the great hall.

  The walls featured old portraits, in color, with a faded pastel tint. In one, a grim-faced man with a square beard stood next to a lady in a frilled dress gripping a carriage. In the next, the same lady looked over her shoulder on a wharf as men in newsboy caps eyed her. In a third, an elderly woman sat beneath a tree holding a baby in a dress and bonnet.

  “The Kristoff family,” Diane explained, noting Brendan and Cordelia’s fascination. “That’s Denver Kristoff”—the man with the square beard—“his wife, Eliza May”—the woman on the wharf—“and his mother”—the woman under the tree with the baby. “I forget her name. Anyway. The pictures are just for show. When you move in—if you move in—you can put up pictures of your own family.”

  Brendan tried to imagine Walker photos on the wall: him and Dad at a lacrosse game with Dr. Walker holding the stick incorrectly; Cordelia yelling at Mom because she didn’t want her picture taken without makeup; Eleanor crossing her eyes and smiling too wide. If you took stupid pictures and added a hundred years, did they end up looking eerie and important?

  “There are three bedrooms on this floor,” Diane said. “The master—”

  “Only three? You guys promised me I’d have my own room,” Brendan said.

  “The fourth is upstairs. In the attic.” Diane pulled a string on the ceiling. A trapdoor swung down, followed by steps that folded out to lightly kiss the floor.

  “Cool!” Brendan said. He climbed the ladder hand over fist.

  Cordelia entered one of the bedrooms off the hall. It wasn’t the master (which had a king-size bed and two bedside tables) but it was a nice-sized room with fleur-de-lis wallpaper. She said, “I’ll take this one.”

  “Then which one is mine?” Eleanor asked.

  “Guys, this is all hypothetical . . . ,” Dr. Walker tried, but Cordelia pointed Eleanor to the third bedroom, which was more of a maid’s bedroom—or a closet.

  “I’m stuck with the smallest?”

  “You are the smallest.”

  “Mom! It’s not fair! How come I get the little room?”

  “Cordelia’s a big girl. She needs space,” Mrs. Walker said.

  “Hear that, Cordelia? Mom says you need to go on a diet!” Brendan called from the attic.

  “Bren, shut up! She means I’m older!”

  Alone, upstairs, Brendan smiled . . . but then the attic began to hold his attention. It had a rollaway bed set up by the window, a bureau with various tchotchkes on top, and a bat skeleton on a shelf jutting out of the wall.

  The bat skeleton was mounted on a smooth black rock with its wings outstretched. Its head tilted up like it was catching bugs. It was one of the creepiest things Brendan had ever seen . . . but he wasn’t scared. He pulled out his phone to take a picture.

  “Brendan, apologize to your sister!” Mrs. Walker yelled, and Eleanor joined in: “Yeah, Bren, get down here!”

  Of course when he wasn’t scared of something, there was no one around to be impressed. Brendan descended the ladder. Cordelia glared at him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You don’t need to go on a diet. But—look what they have upstairs! I took a picture—”

  Cordelia grabbed his phone and deleted the photo.

  “Hey!”

  “Now we’re even.”

  “You didn’t even look at it!”

  Diane tried to hide her exasperation with a smile. “Shall we continue?”

  The family followed her down the hall, passing a knob sticking out of a square cut into the wall. “What’s that?” Eleanor asked.

  “Dumbwaiter,” Diane said curtly.

  They reached the end of the hall. “That’s it,” Diane said, glancing out the bay window at the Walkers’ used Toyota, then back to Dr. Walker. “You haven’t asked the critical question.”

  “The price,” Dr. Walker said dolefully. Truth was, when he’d heard “rustic” and “charming,” he’d thought the same thing as Cordelia: that the house was a fixer-upper he could afford. But two stories plus an attic, fully furnished, with a library and bridge views, in Sea Cliff? This was a five-million-dollar residence.

  Diane said, “The owners are asking three hundred thousand.”

  Brendan saw a look of disbelief ripple across his father’s face. Then Dr. Walker pulled himself together and put on his business voice. It was good to hear. Brendan used to hear it often, when his dad did interviews or advised other surgeons, but for the last month, since “the incident,” Dr. Walker hadn’t had occasion to make those sorts of calls. Now he spoke with purpose.

  “Ms. Dobson, we’ll take it. Please draw up the papers and we’ll close as soon as possible.”

  “Wonderful!” Diane opened a silver case to give Dr. Walker a business card. Mrs. Walker hugged her husband. Eleanor asked, “What’s that mean? We got the house? We’re going to live here?”

  Brendan stepped forward. “Why is it so cheap?”

  “Bren!” Mrs. Walker snapped.

  “It’s the same price as an apartment. Less, even. It doesn’t add up. What are you trying to pull?”

  “Your family’s inquisitiveness is welcome,” said Diane. “Brendan, the owners are trying to liquidate their investment. Like many families they’ve fallen on hard times, and they’re willing to drop the price to get out—especially if it means helping others in a tough spot. You may have noticed that there’s no For Sale sign on the lawn. The owners aren’t looking to sell to any family—they’re looking for the right family. A family in need.”

  She smiled. Brendan hated being the object of her pity. It would have been one thing if she only pitied him—that he could deal with—but she pitied all of them. And that was because of his father. It was so embarrassing. Dr. Walker was trying to do it all backward: reverse-engineer his reputation by getting an impressive house to land an impressive job at an impressive hospital with an administration that was impressed by his renown and willing to overlook “the incident.” But he couldn’t even impress this real estate agent. Brendan felt like he’d be better off on his own, or maybe at boarding school like some of his friends. But there was no way his parents could afford boarding school.

  Diane led the Walkers downstairs, through the great hall, to the front entrance. “I think you’ll find Kristoff House a wonderful home.”

  “We shouldn’t take it,” Brendan whispered to Cordelia. “You know Dad’s not thinking right these days. There’s something fishy here.”

  “You’re just scared.”

  “What? Me? No.”

  “Sure you are. You don’t want to live with that creepy angel on the lawn.”

  “Excuse me? There was a bat skeleton in the attic and I wasn’t scared of that.”

  “So? Doesn’t prove anything. Nell, wasn’t Bren scared of that statue?”

  Eleanor nodded.

  “I rest my case.”

  There was no way Brendan was going to let Cordelia have the last word. As his family walked out the front door and headed down the pebbled path, he split off and ran to the stone angel, pulling out his phone to take another picture. He’d put his arm around the thing and grin and sho
w the world he wasn’t frightened of a hunk of rock with moss accents.

  Except the stone angel wasn’t there.

  Brendan suppressed the urge to call out. Maybe he was just confused. Maybe the statue was on the other side of the house. But no: He remembered the broken hand was the right hand, and that it was a few inches from the exterior wall. Who moved the statue?

  Brendan knelt to investigate the pine needles that carpeted the ground. There should have been a clear imprint where the base of the statue had been, where the needles were flat and damp, maybe with pill bugs scurrying around, but it looked like the statue had simply never been there.

  Suddenly a face appeared. Inches from Brendan’s own, its voice hissing like a swarm of wasps leaving hell.

  “You don’t belong here.”

  She was a bone-white old woman, as tall as the stone angel, bald, with cracked lips pulled back over brown teeth. She stared at Brendan with glistening steel-blue eyes. She wore dirty layers of rags and no shoes; her toenails were amber, encrusted with soil. She was the crone that Brendan had feared, but a hundred times worse, and when she spoke, her breath was fouler than six-month-old compost.

  “Leave this place!”

  She wrapped her hand around Brendan’s wrist. It felt like a rope. He tried to pull away, but she held him fast . . . and then she looked into his eyes. “Who are you?” she asked more quietly.

  “B-Brendan Walker,” he said.

  “Walker?” she repeated.

  Brendan had never been so scared. Not scared stiff—beyond that, scared into action, like someone had shot a spike of adrenaline into his back. He twisted and wrested his hand free. He ran, spit flying out the side of his mouth. “Mom! Dad!”

  Surely they’d seen her: She was a six-foot baldy with the body-mass index of a skeleton; she’d be tough to miss. He reached his family back at the Toyota after running across the lawn, which suddenly seemed to be the size of a football field.

  “Bren, what’s wrong?”

  “Are you okay?!”