House of Secrets

by Chris Columbus

  “What a strange—” Cordelia started, but her father said, “Shhh.”

  “What?”

  “When you say good-bye to a person, you always wait ten seconds before talking about them.” He counted down: “Two . . . one . . . go.”

  “What a freak,” Brendan said, rejoining them. Dr. Walker sighed at the futility of sending his son to his room. “I bet she isn’t even sick. And you better throw that pie away. Definite anthrax alert.”

  “For once, Bren, I agree with you,” said Dr. Walker, dumping the pie in the trash.

  “Hold on!” said Cordelia. “You guys aren’t being fair. She could just be senile. She’s obviously not really Kristoff’s daughter. He built this house in . . . Bren?”

  Her brother thought for a moment. “1907.”

  “Right, so what is she, a hundred?”

  “If she was born here, she could be as old as a hundred and six. And you should see how she looks before she takes a shower. And gets teeth-whitening strips.” Brendan was wondering how he would sleep tonight. Forget the lacrosse stick—he needed a flamethrower.

  “She was a little creepy,” Mrs. Walker said. “I don’t like the idea that she used to live here.”

  “Don’t worry, it’ll sort itself out.” Dr. Walker put an arm around his wife. “Let’s just be thankful that the move is over and get dinner.” He kissed Mrs. Walker on the cheek.

  “Who wants to try our new pizza place?” Mrs. Walker asked. “It’s called Pino’s.” She was already looking at her phone. “It’s supposed to be delicious.”

  “I’m going upstairs,” Cordelia said—and then, in a whisper to Brendan, “to find out a little more about Dahlia Kristoff.”

  “I’ll come with,” Brendan whispered back, surprised at his sudden urge to work with his sister.

  “No, you’ve got to talk your way out of being grounded,” Cordelia said, leaving Brendan . . . who looked up to see his parents standing over him, ready to have a long talk with him about threatening people with weapons.

  Upstairs, Cordelia took down a picture from the wall: the faded image of the elderly woman, who Diane Dobson had said was Kristoff’s mother, holding a baby. She went to her room, got a nail file, and came back to the hallway. She used the nail file to open the frame, moving very slowly and carefully. Finally she got the picture free. On the back of it, perhaps in Denver Kristoff’s own handwriting, it said: Helen K w/Dahlia K, Mother’s 70th, Alamo Square, 1908.

  Cordelia flipped the picture over to look at the baby: the infant Dahlia Kristoff. Her eyes had the same steely intensity—

  “Cordelia!”

  She nearly jumped out of her skin. It was her mother from downstairs. “Pizza’s here!”

  Cordelia shimmied the picture back into the frame, which was a very painstaking process that left her pizza downstairs almost cold by the time she got to it. She found her family on the living room floor, digging into a pepperoni pie without plates, pouring cups of soda for one another. Dr. Walker had hooked up the TV and ordered an on-demand movie: the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup.

  “The Marx Brothers? Again? We always watch the Marx Brothers!” argued Eleanor. “Can’t we watch something in color? Where the people are still alive?”

  “It’s a family tradition,” said Dr. Walker. And he was right. Whenever the family had something to celebrate, they’d order up a Marx Brothers classic. The opening credits for Duck Soup began to roll.

  “What’d you find?” Brendan whispered to Cordelia.

  “Dahlia Kristoff is in one of the pictures upstairs. And if that picture is dated correctly, she’s a hundred and five years old.”

  “Did you see her hands in the picture?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Because somewhere along the way she lost one. I have to tell you something, Deal. I didn’t want to say, because I was embarrassed, but—”

  But the doorbell rang.

  “Probably a noise complaint from all your arguing,” Dr. Walker joked to Eleanor. He left his family and went to the great hall. He opened the front door without using the peephole. He was used to living in safe neighborhoods.

  Dahlia Kristoff stepped in swiftly. She wore her polka-dot dress but no hat or shoes this time. She was completely bald. Dr. Walker drew back from her splotchy red skull and yellow toes.

  “Excuse me—hello? Miss? You can’t come into my house!”

  “Shut up!” Dahlia hissed, striding toward the living room.

  Dr. Walker followed, pulling out his phone to dial 911, but suddenly the phone jumped from his hand. It flew through the air and cracked against the philosopher bust, as if it had been snatched up by a powerful gust of wind. When Dr. Walker retrieved it, it wouldn’t turn on.

  “Dad, who was it?” Brendan called, but instead of his father Dahlia Kristoff stepped in. He froze.

  “My God,” Mrs. Walker said, “what are you doing here? How dare you barge into our home—”

  “How dare you consider this your home!” Dahlia shrieked, and then the transformation began.

  Brendan backed up against the driftwood-legged coffee table, watching it all in slow motion. It was like IMAX 3D but way better (and way worse). The old crone threw her hands up. Just as he’d suspected, her right hand ended in a knobby stump. Dahlia arched her back, stretching, stretching, as if to crack the bones in her spine, and then two gray wings sprang from the neck of her dress!

  Brendan was terrified, stunned, and amazed all at once. His world had just gotten a lot bigger. But all he could think was: I’m not gonna let this freak hurt me. And I’m not gonna let her hurt my family.

  Dahlia Kristoff’s wings unfurled behind her to spread across the room. They weren’t like angel wings; they were dusty and greasy-looking, filling the air with the stench of sulfurous rot.

  “Mom, what’s happening?” Eleanor cried.

  “I don’t know, honey,” Mrs. Walker said, grabbing her youngest with one hand and the cross around her neck with the other. Dahlia laughed—a breathy cackle, a skeleton’s laugh.

  “Get out!” Dr. Walker yelled, crashing into the room, but the crone swung a wing and slammed him across the back, knocking him into the piano with a cacophonous dong. On TV, Groucho Marx slid down a fire pole.

  Brendan tried to run for a weapon, but now Dahlia was flapping her wings, whipping the air up in the house, keeping him off balance. He stared at her. Something horrible was happening to her face. The fine blue veins under her old pale skin, which had been notable to begin with, rose to the surface, bulging as her wings beat. Soon they were joined by her red arteries, protruding from her face like lines of bark on a tree. Brendan thought she might explode and drench them all in blood.

  “You!” Dahlia said, turning to Cordelia. “You stole from my library!”

  “I was just—borrowing—” A gust of wind knocked Cordelia against a wall. The contents of the room were swirling in a spiral now—a pizza box, cups of soda, a Pino’s menu, the TV remote. Brendan had to clutch the couch to stay upright.

  “For the honor of my father!” Dahlia Kristoff howled. “For all the evil done upon him by the Walkers! For the disturbance of the great book! For the craven consultation with Dr. Hayes! For Denver Kristoff, who lives again as he lives always! A life for a life, the Wind Witch has spoken, let a page torn be a page reborn!”

  Slam! The shutters closed on the living-room windows. Brendan heard them slam in the kitchen and library too. Then the glass coffee table rose and hurled toward him. He ducked, but it spun toward Mrs. Walker. She was kneeling, praying. It smacked her in the head.

  “Mom!” Brendan yelled. His mother hit the floor, covered in broken glass, bleeding from her forehead.

  “Get down!” Dr. Walker screamed to his children as he lunged toward his wife. But the Chester chair got him—the same one he’d been sleeping in that afternoon—hitting his skull with a nauseating crack. He slumped over. For some reason Brendan flashed to his mother asking Diane Dobson Is the furniture for sale? and Diane s
aying Everything’s for sale.

  The Wind Witch—that’s what she had called herself: the Wind Witch has spoken—blew Mr. and Mrs. Walker into a corner. They lay unconscious against each other. Brendan, Cordelia, and Eleanor were far away from them, by the piano.

  The foundation of Kristoff House began to shake.

  Brendan wondered if it would tip over and slide into the ocean. The television tilted up and flew at him, the Marx Brothers looking demonic until the cord came out of the wall and they disappeared. The TV shattered on the wall behind him, sending shards of plastic and LCD whirling around—“Nell, close your eyes!”

  Brendan’s younger sister was curled into a ball. Books were flying into the room now from the library, clobbering Brendan and his sisters, attacking like those terrible birds in that Hitchcock movie Brendan had seen once. Each time a book neared him, its pages open and fluttering, he heard voices inside, gibbering in aged accents, demanding to be released.

  “Deal!” Brendan called. All he cared about was surviving—and making sure his family survived. His parents were unconscious on the other side of the room; he couldn’t help them at this moment. But I’m supposed to protect my sisters.

  He couldn’t see Cordelia. The wind was all-consuming; the debris blinded him to everything. He squeezed his eyes shut, rubbed them, and forced them open. Right in front of him floated three books, leather volumes that suddenly seemed to grow, expanding from hardcover-size to almanac-size to encyclopedia-size. Impossible!

  Brendan screamed, but he could no longer hear himself, and then he saw that the room was larger, the ceiling now fifty feet from the floor and rising every second, as if the house were warping and stretching. And then, while the Wind Witch rose to the ceiling and stared down from a towering height, like an avenging angel sent by the wrong side, one last thing entered the room: the bookshelves from the library. Massive, sickeningly heavy even without the books, they slid in one after another, levitating higher and higher, swirling to an apex above and crashing down—and then all was black and silent.

  Brendan came to in a pile of rubble that used to be his new living room. He struggled out from under the heavy shelving that lay on top of him and checked himself for crippling injuries. He felt like he’d been put in a bag of rocks and shaken, but aside from cuts and bruises he was okay.

  He looked around the living room. It was like the pictures he’d seen of that horrible tsunami in Japan, where a slew of debris was thrown across the land. What used to be individual chairs and tables and books was now a foot-deep pile of scrap. The shutters were still closed.

  “Mom?” Brendan called. “Dad?”

  He saw part of the pile move. It looked like a mound with an earthworm underneath. Brendan ran over as Cordelia reached an arm up and dragged herself out.

  “Deal! Are you okay?”

  “I think . . . I blacked out. What about you?”

  “I blacked out too . . . after a lot of insane stuff. These books grew in front of me—they were massive—and then that . . . I don’t want to say her name . . . ”

  “Witch. Wind Witch,” said Cordelia. “That’s what Dahlia called herself.”

  “Right, fine. That Wind Witch flew up to the ceiling and knocked me out. Where are Mom and Dad?”

  Cordelia’s eyes got very big. She started to call desperately, “Mom! Dad!”

  Brendan joined in: “Mom! Please! Hello? Where are you?”

  No answer. Brendan’s eyes welled up, but he didn’t let any tears fall. “What about Nell?” he asked.

  “Nell! Eleanor!” Cordelia began. They stumbled over broken furniture, searching and calling, pawing through piles of splintered wood, trying to avoid slicing their hands on shattered glass. Brendan felt guilty—what kind of older brother was he? He hadn’t even been able to keep his little sister safe.

  A musical plink made him turn his head.

  “What was that?” Cordelia asked.

  It came again, a tiny chime, like a muted string being plucked. Brendan and Cordelia moved toward it. “Nell?” “Mom?” “Dad?”

  They reached the wreckage of the Steinway. It wasn’t as ruined as the rest of the furniture; although its legs were snapped off, it still had its sinuous piano shape. The plinks were coming from inside. Brendan and Cordelia lifted the lid together . . .

  And there was Eleanor, curled up on the strings. She picked at one. “I think that’s an A.”

  “Come here, you.” Cordelia offered Eleanor a hand while Brendan held the piano open. Once she was out, her brother and sister hugged her so hard that they all fell over.

  “Did you black out?” Brendan asked.

  “No, I was awake the whole time.”

  “What did you see?”

  “That . . . angel thing rose to the ceiling, the whole house got really tall, and everything went black.”

  “That’s what we saw! You did black out!”

  “No, I was awake. It was the world that went black. She made it happen. I told you I saw her when we first looked at the house, and you didn’t believe me, remember? And now look what happened!”

  “How do you know it was her?” Cordelia asked. “It could’ve—”

  But Brendan interrupted his sister. “I saw her too. The Wind Witch.”

  “What? When?”

  “When I freaked and said it was ’cause I lost my PSP? I saw her. She grabbed my hand and . . . she asked me my name.”

  “Bren!” Cordelia shoved her brother. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “How was I supposed to tell you? Would you have believed me? No, you would’ve told me I was trying to get attention.”

  “No I wouldn’t! I listen to you—when you actually have important things to say. Which is very rarely—”

  “You’re the one who got us into this situation, Cordelia. You stole from the library—”

  “I borrowed—”

  “She specifically said, ‘You stole from my library!’ Do you remember that, or were you already blacked out?”

  “Stop fighting!” Eleanor yelled. “Where are Mom and Dad?”

  Brendan and Cordelia had to catch their breath. “We don’t know,” Brendan admitted.

  Cordelia struggled to keep her face composed so she wouldn’t scare Nell. “They’re gone.”

  “Then let’s find them,” said Eleanor.

  They started looking by the wall where they had last seen their parents. There was a streak of blood on the paint but otherwise no sign. Eleanor started to cry when she saw the blood. Cordelia put an arm around her. The siblings made their way into the great hall. It was as unrecognizable as the living room, with the coatrack sticking out of a wall and the pottery reduced to jagged jigsaw chunks.

  “Arsdottle’s fine,” said Brendan, looking at the philosopher bust.

  “Because the Wind Witch liked him when she was a girl,” Cordelia said. “She spared him.”

  They spent a quiet moment staring at the implacable bust—and then entered the library. Cordelia cringed. It was bare now, with the shelves gone, the ladders smashed, and the long table split in two. The books had mostly sailed into the living room, but some were still there, strewn around with their covers open. Cordelia picked one up.

  “Guys, it’s The Fighting Ace! This is the book I was reading when the Wind Witch attacked. Isn’t that crazy?”

  Brendan wondered briefly if it was one of the three books that had expanded in front of him, but they had bigger problems now. “Who cares?”

  “I do,” insisted Cordelia. Brendan snorted and led Eleanor toward the kitchen. Cordelia carefully found her place in the novel and salvaged a sliver of wood for a bookmark. No matter how bad things got at Kristoff House, with The Fighting Ace she could escape.

  The kitchen showcased more destruction: the fridge was dented and leaking; a burner grate from the stove had smashed through a cabinet and destroyed the dinnerware; a family-size box of Cheerios had spilled its guts into the sink. The kids ran upstairs, frantically calling for their pare
nts, but there was no sign.

  The second floor was also in ruins, with two exceptions. The pictures in the hallway were in perfect condition. That made sense, because they were of Dahlia’s family; she wouldn’t hurt them. But Cordelia discovered something in the master bedroom, too: the white-and-bronze RW trunk.

  “Bren? Nell? Look. Everything is demolished, but this trunk is fine.”

  “Maybe the Wind Witch protected it,” said Brendan. “Maybe there’s something inside she wanted to keep.”

  “Or,” said Cordelia, “it’s magical. Guarded by a ward.”

  “A what?”

  “You know, like a magic symbol that protects something.” Cordelia paused. “What about ‘RW’? Who do you think he is?”

  “Maybe it’s a she,” Eleanor said.

  “Rutherford Walker,” said Brendan, recalling the name. “Dr. Rutherford Walker, to be exact.”

  “Who?”

  “Our great-great-grandfather. Dad told me his name once.”

  Cordelia was impressed. “You remembered from hearing that once? How come you don’t have better grades?”

  “Because at school there’s nothing worth remembering.”

  “Well, this trunk could be a clue,” said Cordelia. “Remember what the Wind Witch said: ‘For the evil done him by the Walkers—’”

  “‘For all the evil done upon him by the Walkers—’”

  “Bren, she was talking about revenge. And him was her father, Denver Kristoff. It must be revenge for something that happened decades ago. Maybe Kristoff started a blood feud against us.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “I don’t know; why does anybody start blood feuds?”

  “Maybe that old bag is crazy. She said a lot of stuff back there. ‘The craven consultation with Dr. Hayes’? Who’s he? What’s that even mean?”

  “I don’t know . . . but our family used to live in San Francisco.”

  “And you think some relative of ours just happened to know the guy who built this house?”

  “Not just some relative. Dr. Rutherford Walker, our great-great-grandfather, who owned this trunk. What did Dad tell you about him?”