House of Secrets

by Chris Columbus

  And then Kristoff House hit the ground.

  And kept going.

  Cordelia couldn’t figure it out—was she in some kind of afterlife? Hitting the earth should have turned off the power button, but she could still see a now-brownish blur outside the canted windows and hear a rolling, crunching rumble. It felt like they were sliding down a hill. Brendan whooped, “The barrels!”

  “What?” Will asked.

  Cordelia got it: “The earthquake barrels! There’s dozens of them strapped to the foundation, and we’re rolling on them!”

  Indeed, if they had been outside Kristoff House, they would have seen an awesome sight: a three-story landmarked Victorian home literally barreling down a steep, rugged incline like an out-of-control trolley car, devastating everything in its path. Ferns, logs, anthills, some of the barrels themselves, and various shell-shocked rodents were sent flying. Inside the home, it was like being on a sleigh ride, and as with so many things that the Walkers and Will had experienced in the past forty-eight hours, it would have been amazingly fun if not for the element of death.

  “Go, Denver Kristoff!” Brendan yelled, clambering back into the closet.

  “What are you on about?” asked Will.

  “Kristoff designed this place to float away on barrels if there was a really bad earthquake, and now we’re rolling down a hill on those barrels!”

  “Into what?” Will asked.

  “Uh-oh,” Brendan said. “We didn’t get a look at what was on the other side of the house, did we, Will?”

  The rocky slope came to an end—and Kristoff House flew off it, soaring into open air.

  The Walkers and Will knew what to do. They were scared, of course—but at this point they were beyond scared. They all shut the door to the padded closet. Cordelia heard the barrels; they were whistling. She grabbed her siblings’ hands. Eleanor and Brendan grabbed Will’s.

  “Whatever happens, I hope it’s quick!” yelled Eleanor bravely. “This up-and-down stuff is driving me cra—”

  With a deafening, shuddering slap, the house hit the ocean.

  Seawater spouted up and fell away. The Walkers and Will stayed in the closet for a long minute, letting their adrenaline levels return to something like normal. Then they left the closet, stared out the window, and breathed. Breathing is really amazing, Brendan thought before he asked, “Are we sinking?”

  “Not yet,” said Cordelia.

  “So we’re floating.”

  “It would seem that way.”

  Kristoff House was in the middle of a vast bay, bobbing in rocky waves. Behind it, the forest stretched as far as the eye could see, ending in a steep incline with a brown scar where the house had gouged out its path. Ahead of it, the sun was sinking behind snowcapped mountains. The perspective seemed wrong: The Walkers were so far from the mountains that the base of each one began below the horizon, yet the peak of each one reached into the clouds.

  “Are we sure this isn’t San Francisco? And we aren’t sailing toward Marin?” Eleanor asked.

  “There’re no mountains like that in Marin,” said Cordelia. “These look bigger than Everest.”

  “Oh, right. So maybe we’ll float somewhere with food! I’m hungry. And thirsty. Like, really bad.”

  “Don’t count on it,” said Brendan. “Some colossuses will probably wade out here and grab us first.”

  “Colossi,” corrected Cordelia.

  “Will you stop it? Who cares? If the stupid giants don’t get us, we’ll drown!”

  “Drown?” asked a frightened Eleanor.

  “Did you hear those barrels getting snapped off when we rolled down the hill?” Brendan said. “There’s probably only a couple of ’em still strapped to the house. It’s only a matter of time before we sink.”

  “I miss Mom and Dad,” said Eleanor in a quiet voice. She wiped a tear off her cheek. “And I want juice. And I’m scared.”

  “C’mere.” Cordelia wrapped an arm around her. “The scary part’s over. Now we just have to deal with Brendan.” She smiled—and despite himself, Brendan did too. Still breathing, he thought. Isn’t that crazy? They all stood together as the last rays of sunlight disappeared behind the mountains, wondering how they’d make it through a night at sea.

  “Do you hear that?” asked Will. They listened. At first, all they could register was the soft smack of waves against the house, but then Cordelia heard it. Sinister like the noise of fluorescent lights in a school bathroom.

  “Hissing,” she said.

  “Exactly. Soft but consistent. Let’s go check on it.”

  Will offered his hand to Cordelia, who offered hers to Eleanor. Brendan took up the rear. They went forward as a human chain down to the kitchen. The sky was filling with glittering stars, more than the Walkers had ever seen, but even in the surprisingly bright starlight, they had to tread carefully to avoid the debris on the floor. Kristoff House was such a mess that it was tough to imagine it had ever been a decent human habitation.

  In the kitchen, Brendan went to the basement door.

  “Look,” he said, opening it and peering down the steps, “we’re flooded!”

  “Let me see.” Cordelia sighed when she saw that the water came up to the top step. It had been easy to be hopeful upstairs—it was harder when confronted with her own reflection in dark seawater. “Oh no. We’ve got about a foot before the entire first floor gets soaked!”

  “It doesn’t look like it’s getting higher,” said Eleanor. “Maybe it’ll stop there.”

  “Look,” said Will, pointing to a disturbance in the water. A pod of bubbles burbled toward the back of the stairwell.

  “Air from one of the ruptured barrels,” said Cordelia. “We’re losing buoyancy.”

  “You mean sinking?” asked Eleanor.

  “Exactly,” said Cordelia, plopping down on the kitchen floor.

  “Deal, c’mon, why are you sitting?” Brendan asked.

  “Why should I not sit? You were right. This house is gonna sink and we’re gonna be swimming to land in the middle of the night trying not to get eaten by sharks or colossi,” Cordelia said in monotone.

  “You are such a downer,” said Eleanor. “I thought it was Bren we had to worry about.”

  “Yeah, well, hate to break it to you, but I don’t have any more answers,” Cordelia said. “I don’t know how a bunch of kids lost at sea can possibly escape a sinking house.”

  “We could build a boat,” Brendan said, “and sail away, like that song, y’know?” He started singing the Styx classic “Come Sail Away,” trying to get his sister to laugh, but she wasn’t having it.

  “The three of us don’t know how to build a boat. Do you, Will?”

  Will shook his head. He was stone-faced, betraying no reaction.

  “See? Even a pilot can’t save you when you’re lost at sea.” Cordelia looked down. Brendan and Eleanor looked at each other. Eleanor’s stomach rumbled so loud they all heard it. “Plus there’s that,” Cordelia said. “We haven’t eaten since breakfast Lunchables.”

  “It hurts . . . ,” Eleanor moaned, holding her stomach. “I didn’t want to tell you guys, but it hurts like something sharp and empty. And all I can think about is food.”

  “Well, you won’t have to worry much longer,” Cordelia declared, but before she could say another depressing thing, Will stood over her and she got quiet.

  “I was wrong about you,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “You’re not like Cordelia in King Lear at all. You’re a coward.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A sniveling, weak little coward!” said Will. “I thought you were mature. Thought you had backbone. But now, when things get a little rough, you’re ready to toss it all in and pull the rest of us down with you! Well, I won’t have it. I refuse to give up!”

  He grabbed Cordelia and pulled her to her feet.

  “Do you know what my boss, Lieutenant-Colonel Reginald Rathbone the Third, told me on my first day in the RFC? He said we’
re only here because someone, somewhere, didn’t give up! The Spanish navy tried to rule the seas, but the British didn’t give up! Napoleon tried to take over Europe, but his brave enemies didn’t give up! Your father asked your mother out on a date once, and he didn’t give up! The people who give up never write history! And you’re giving up!”

  “But we’ve got no options,” Cordelia said.

  “No options? We haven’t even explored the house!”

  “Uh, yeah, we have,” said Brendan. “It used to be just books and expensive furniture, and now it’s just books and junk.”

  “What about that hissing?”

  Will gave them all a moment to be silent so they could hear it. It was still there—an insistent high whine.

  Will strode into the hallway and pressed his ear against the wall. “I’ll tell you what I think, before any of you catch a nasty case of cowardice from Cordelia. I think it’s another barrel, and it’s been punctured, just like the one underwater in the basement. This barrel is somewhere under this house releasing air, and the reason we can hear it everywhere”—he rapped his knuckles against the wall—“is because the walls are hollow.”

  “Hollow?” asked Cordelia.

  Will knocked again. Sure enough, the sound echoed as if reverberating through a hidden chamber. Cordelia placed her ear against it and tried herself.

  “He’s right,” she said. “There’s space back there.”

  “See?” Will asked. “‘No options.’ Piffle! There are always options.”

  “One question, Will,” said Brendan. “I’m all for trying to stay positive and upbeat when we’re about to face a pretty nasty death, but exactly how do hissing barrels and hollow walls give us options?”

  “Hollow walls mean passageways. Passageways mean other rooms, hidden chambers. And hidden chambers mean . . . ”

  “Food!” said Eleanor, clutching her stomach. “I hope.”

  “Hope,” said Will, “is the most important thing.” His eyes burned straight through Cordelia.

  The Walkers and Will set about finding a way into the hollow walls. They lit some scented candles and placed them on the floor, secured in makeshift aluminum-foil candleholders, which Eleanor chided was very dangerous. (“Then you’re in charge,” Brendan told her. “I’m making you official fire-safety officer.”) Will pressed his ear against the wall, moving to different spots and rapping with his knuckles as if listening for the house’s heartbeat. Cordelia, embarrassed by her previous fit of hopelessness—and by the way Will had called her out on it—tried to help, imitating Will’s movements.

  “Please stop,” Will told her, “I’m trying to concentrate.”

  “Excuse me? You told me not to lose hope; here I am, not losing hope. Why the attitude?”

  Brendan and Eleanor grimaced at each other: Here they go.

  “I do appreciate you pitching in,” said Will, “but I’m trying to determine where to break into the hollow wall, and I can’t if you’re mucking about making racket.”

  “I’m helping you!”

  “You’re distracting me.”

  “Maybe I’ll be the one to find a way in; did you ever think of that?”

  Will smiled and shook his head. “My dear, that’s not possible. The male brain is far more refined than the female brain when it comes to visualizing physical space.”

  “Really?” Cordelia asked, turning red with anger.

  “It’s a scientific fact, and I won’t hear any arguments to the contrary.”

  Cordelia didn’t intend to respond with an argument. She was looking for something to throw. Fortunately for her, the metal foot from the suit of armor lay right beside her. She flung it at Will.

  “Crikey!” Will threw up his hands to protect his face. The hunk of metal bounced off his forearm, nearly hitting his still-injured shoulder, and smashed through a hallway window; Cordelia heard it plop into the ocean outside. The window curtain swept out, pulled by the breeze, and billowed over the waves.

  “You unbelievable harridan!” Will rubbed his arm. “How dare—”

  “I’m not going to be lectured by someone whose view of women is stuck in 1910s Britain!” Cordelia exclaimed. “Especially when our house is sinking! I’m going to do something about it!”

  “I doubt that,” Will replied.

  Cordelia turned on her heels and strode toward the kitchen. “You’ll see. My less-refined female brain has somehow come up with an idea!”

  Eleanor went after Cordelia.

  “Where are you going?” Brendan asked.

  “Us sisters have to stick together!”

  Eleanor climbed the spiral stairs with Cordelia. “How do you live with them?” Will asked Brendan. “Must be maddening.”

  “I play a lot of video games,” Brendan said.

  Will turned back to the wall. As he tapped on it and listened, Brendan took notice of the wall-mounted lamps all around. He had an idea about them . . . but just as he was about to share it, Will pulled his ear away and declared, “There. That’s the spot. The wall’s weak point. Can you fetch me hammer and pencil, mate?”

  Brendan went to the kitchen and found a pencil and the small ball-peen hammer that Cordelia had tried on the RW trunk. When he presented the items, Will balked at the hammer. “What’s this? I’m not trying to break into a dollhouse!”

  “It’s all we’ve got. But you know what? I might have a better solution,” said Brendan.

  “What’s that?”

  With supreme confidence, Brendan grabbed one of the wall-mounted lamps—and yanked down with two hands. The lamp snapped off, leaving an ugly wire sticking out and plaster crumbling onto Brendan’s face.

  “Have you lost the plot?” asked Will.

  Brendan got mad. “Listen, buddy, you might be a hotshot when it comes to flying planes and making my sister angry, but you’re looking at a veteran of hundreds of hours of New Adventures of Scooby-Doo, and when Scooby and the gang need to get into a hidden passageway, they always do the same thing—pull on a lamp!”

  “Scooby who?” Will asked.

  “Scooby-Doo—he’s a talking dog who happens to be a detective.” Brendan grabbed the next lamp and pulled. Once again, the lamp snapped off. Will burst out laughing.

  “Okay . . . so maybe Denver Kristoff didn’t rig the lamps,” said a frustrated Brendan, picking plaster chunks out of his hair.

  Suddenly, a splash of water on Will’s neck made him spin around. “Bombs away!” he heard from upstairs.

  He poked his head out the broken window and saw part of a desk drifting in the sea. The moon had risen, and its luminescence made the waves look as if they were laced with crystal.

  “Watch out!” Cordelia yelled from above. “Wouldn’t want to hurt your massive male brain!” Will pulled back—just before a broken chair fell from the second-story window and hit the water, sending another burst of sea spray at him.

  “Are you mad?” he called up.

  “We’re lightening the load on the ship!” Cordelia shouted. “‘Jettisoning the ballast,’ as your naval colleagues might say!”

  “That—that—” Will sputtered; Brendan was sure he was going to unleash an insult. “That is a fantastic idea! Bloody good thinking! Keep it up!”

  “You’re too kind!” Cordelia replied with a healthy dose of sarcasm before tossing a frayed wicker hamper into the water. Eleanor was feeding her an endless supply of ruined items from the master bedroom.

  “See?” Will turned to Brendan. “Now your sisters are actually helping, and all you’re doing is pulling on lamps. Stay out of my way and don’t cause trouble.”

  “What do you want me to do?” asked Brendan.

  “Just bugger off until I break through this wall,” said Will.

  Brendan grumbled and kicked a lamp as Will marked an X on the wall with the pencil and began hitting it with the ball-peen hammer, trying to focus while an alarm clock—and a shoe tree, and a vacuum cleaner—hit the ocean behind him. Brendan walked to the living room and p
lopped down on the now-legless piano. Resting on the floor was Savage Warriors, the book Cordelia had been reading that she flipped over on the couch—and that reminded Brendan of something important.

  “Deal! Nell!” Brendan rushed into the upstairs hall. Cordelia and Eleanor couldn’t keep from smiling as they threw magazines and bookends and paperweights that had migrated into the hall out the window.

  “Bren, see how it’s working?” Cordelia said. “We’re lighter!”

  “Yeah, that’s great, but I forgot to tell you guys,” Brendan said. “I saw The Book of Doom and Desire.”

  “What? Where?”

  “Before the colossus thing. When I snuck into the woods to set off the grenade. Inside the cliff where the explosion happened.”

  “How did it get there?” asked Eleanor.

  “I don’t think the book exists in just one place. I think it can jump around. Like if we follow our selfish desires, it’ll show up. And we’ll be tempted to open it. But that’s my point: don’t.”

  “Why?” Cordelia asked. “Did you open it?”

  “No! I was going to, but—it would’ve been wrong. That book is pure evil.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “Because it . . . ” Brendan searched for the right words. “As I got closer to the book, it started to have this incredible hold over me. It was an amazing, really kinda awesome feeling. Like I could do anything, like I was stronger and more powerful than anybody. It was like what they talk about at those special assemblies at school, where they teach us about the dangers of drugs? And how you become so obsessed with them they can take over your life and ruin everything? The book was like that. When I was holding it, I didn’t care about anything else. And worst of all . . . I didn’t care about any of you. And that’s when I knew . . . I had to do everything in my power to keep from opening it, and throw it away. Because if I had opened it . . . I’m pretty sure I’d still be in that forest. Alone.” Brendan gulped. “And I don’t want to be alone. Okay?”

  Eleanor gave him a hug. She couldn’t remember a time when her brother had admitted to needing anyone in his family. Cordelia watched and nodded . . . but she thought, Maybe the book scared Bren because he’s not the one who’s supposed to open it. Maybe I am.