House of Secrets

by Chris Columbus

  “Come back!” called Brendan, but Eleanor wasn’t listening. She didn’t stop running until the Walkers and Will caught up with her by the driftwood bookshelf.

  “Nell! Stop moving! You’re just gonna get more tangled up!” Cordelia said.

  “It’s alive!” Eleanor screeched. “It’s trying to strangle me!”

  “You’re imagining things.” Cordelia knelt in front of her sister just like Mrs. Walker always did. “Relax. Everything will be fine.”

  Cordelia slowly began extricating the clingy skeleton from Eleanor, first removing the fingers from her shoulders and then untangling the arms and legs. Within moments, the fearsome hanger-on was reduced to a jumble of bones on the floor.

  “He left bone marks on my clothes, see?” Eleanor asked. She was breathing in gasps, with tears streaming down her face.

  “I see,” said Cordelia, licking her thumb to rub clean the imaginary spots Eleanor insisted were on her outfit. “All gone, see?”

  “And there’s something here . . . ,” said Eleanor, plucking a very unimaginary skeleton’s tooth from her ear and handing it to Cordelia.

  “Ew,” said Brendan, watching with Will. Cordelia gave Eleanor a hug as she dropped the tooth and motioned for the pilot to take care of the bones. Will picked up the skeleton and carried it down the hall. Only the tooth was left winking on the floor.

  “Sorry, Nell,” Brendan said as he hugged his sister. “I made up the part about the tarantula because I didn’t want you seeing that thing.”

  “I’ll take a million tarantulas over a dead skeleton!” said Eleanor. “From now on just tell me the truth. I’m old enough to handle it.”

  Brendan nodded and took his sister’s hand. Cordelia took the other . . . and a few minutes later the three Walkers stepped out of the hole in the secret hallway and back into the “normal” side of Kristoff House—to the extent that any part of it could be considered normal. Will followed, extinguishing torches.

  “Did you lock the closet?” Eleanor asked.

  “Unfortunately, there’s no lock, but that skeleton’s not going anywhere. He’s dead as a doornail.”

  “In this house? I wouldn’t count on anything staying dead,” said Brendan.

  “That’s why I’m sleeping between you guys tonight,” said Eleanor.

  “It is bedtime,” said Cordelia. “We’ve had a long day.”

  “And I’m so thirsty,” said Eleanor. “I hate even saying it, because it’s making my lips feel extra dry. It’s like my body is shriveling up inside.”

  “Eleanor’s right,” said Will. “We need to drink something. Dehydration kills. We’ve used up all the melted ice?”

  Cordelia nodded.

  “And obviously there isn’t anything coming out of the sinks . . . what about the loo?”

  “Gross,” said Brendan. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t even say that.”

  “So the toilets still have fresh water?” Will asked.

  “Not fresh water, hello?! Toilet water!” said Brendan.

  “Better than seawater,” said Will. “And didn’t you just move into this place? It’s not as if the toilets have seen much use.” He started walking to the downstairs bathroom. “You coming?”

  The Walkers followed. Sure enough, the toilet bowl was full of clear water. Will dipped his hand in and drank a mouthful.

  “Fine,” he said. He drank a second helping. “Tastes like diamonds.”

  Brendan’s mouth watered as he watched, but he was still queasy about the concept. “I can’t do it,” he said. “As thirsty as I am, I can’t drink water from a toilet bowl.”

  “Just think of it as a punch bowl,” said Will.

  “I don’t pee in a punch bowl,” said Brendan.

  “What about from here?” Cordelia said, pulling the cover off the tank behind the bowl. Inside was crystal-clear water. “Something seems less gross about drinking from here.”

  “I agree,” said Eleanor, who took a deep breath and drank from the tank. Cordelia joined in, followed by Brendan . . . and in a moment all the Walkers were gulping water out of the toilet tank like it was the only HO in the house—because it was. Brendan had never tasted water like this before. It seemed to heal him as it went down his throat, and soon—too soon—his belly felt full and he felt sleepy.

  “That should get us through the night,” Will said. “Tomorrow we’ll keep searching the hallway for fresh water . . . and eat whatever we can find in cans in the basement.”

  “Do we have to brush our teeth before bed?” Eleanor said.

  “Absolutely not,” said Cordelia. Eleanor pumped her fist before they all went upstairs to the master bedroom, hearing the waves lapping outside.

  Conditions had deteriorated considerably from the previous night. Instead of a bed and some mattresses on the floor, there was now only the king-size mattress, which they had to pull out of the broken window. (The other mattress had apparently bounced out the same window after the colossus punched the house; it was nowhere to be seen.) They could only all fit on the king-size mattress if they lay like sardines. The boys got the outside and the girls got the middle.

  “I call not-outside tomorrow night,” said Brendan.

  “Why?” asked Cordelia.

  “Because there’s glass on the floor, hello? What if I roll over? I’ll wake up with glass sticking out of my face!”

  “You’re such a baby!” teased Eleanor.

  “And a wimp,” said Cordelia.

  “And a right proper weasel!” said Will, laughing.

  “I hate you guys,” said Brendan, yawning. But as everyone’s chuckles quieted in the hushed night, he looked out the window at the moon . . . and it occurred to him that inside this house, no matter what, even if his stomach was full of toilet water, he had a warm family and a friend. Outside was a cold moon and colder ocean. No contest.

  “I take it back,” said Brendan. “I don’t hate you. I wouldn’t wanna be trapped inside a floating house with anybody else.”

  Eleanor was the first to nod off, holding her sister’s arm. As Brendan closed his eyes, he heard Will whisper to Cordelia: “The way you took care of your sister back there, quite touching. Reminded me of someone who took care of me once . . . my older brother Edgar.”

  “I remind you of your brother?” Cordelia asked, offended.

  “No, no, you’re much prettier!” Will corrected himself. “Edgar, wonderful bloke, but rather lacking in the beauty department.”

  Brendan opened his eyes so he could roll them properly. Guess those two are back on good terms, he thought as he turned over, making sure he didn’t fall off the bed onto any glass shards. He listened until he heard the steady breathing of Will, Cordelia, and Eleanor . . . but he couldn’t sleep.

  Brendan was certainly tired; his body was bruised and worn like he’d just played three lacrosse games in a row. The little things were keeping him awake—the hard slap of a big wave, the splash of a fish outside the house (or is that some other, nastier creature?), that continuous hiss of the barrel somewhere in the walls. He was afraid to go downstairs, so he stayed in bed in a kind of half sleep, tossing and turning in the tiny space he was allotted on the mattress.

  And then he heard someone enter the room.

  Brendan kept his eyes shut. It’s my mind playing tricks on me. As long as I keep my eyes closed, it’ll go away. He used to play these games when he was younger: He would imagine that Shiva, the Hindu destroyer god, was inside his room, standing over his bed, and would kill him if he got scared enough to open his eyes. (He’d read about Shiva in an encyclopedia, and frankly, it had turned him off ever opening an encyclopedia again.)

  The sound of footsteps got closer. The whatever-it-was rustled and clacked as it moved. Brendan stayed absolutely still, absolutely terrified. Don’t look, don’t look, he willed himself, trying to get a grip on his brain, but then he thought, You have to look—don’t you want to see the thing that kills you? He snapped his eyes open—

  To se
e the skeleton from downstairs standing above him.

  It stared at Brendan, and although its eyes were just empty hollows, it had a keen gaze. It also had a chip above its eye. The bones at the top of its cheek scraped against each other as it stretched its jaws into a grin, revealing a missing tooth. Then it raised its hand to its face, extended a bony finger over what used be its lips, and uttered a tiny sound . . .

  “Shhhhh.”

  Brendan liked to think he was a manly person, but with the skeleton above him, he made a noise—“Ah, ih, ah”—that didn’t sound like any man. It sounded like he was choking on a Dorito.

  The skeleton unfolded an arm and reached toward Brendan’s neck. Brendan tried to back away, but his muscles had turned to Jell-O; he tried to scream, but he had forgotten how to breathe. He knew the fingers were going to wrap around his throat—

  But instead the skeleton touched the bottom of his chin and lifted it to face the ceiling. With its other hand, it pointed upstairs. Toward the attic.

  Brendan shoved the skeleton away and screamed louder than he had in his life. He sounded like a seven-hundred-pound bovine being slammed with a bulldozer.

  “Bren! What is wrong with you?” groaned Cordelia.

  Brendan blinked—and the skeleton was gone. He was sitting straight up on the mattress with sweat on his forehead and his hands tapping his face and chest, making sure he was still there.

  “No way,” he said. “Seriously? A dream?”

  “Apparently,” said Cordelia, turning over on her stomach. “Unless you were practicing your fire-alarm impersonation.”

  “Guys, be nice. He had a nightmare!” said Eleanor. “Are you okay, Bren?”

  “I guess so. . . . I’m sorry I woke you guys up. . . .”

  “You probably woke up some fish,” grumbled Will.

  “What was the dream about?” Eleanor asked. “Drowning?”

  “It wasn’t . . . ” Brendan shook his head. “I was awake. And that skeleton from the closet downstairs . . . I saw it. It was missing a tooth, it had the same chip above its eye . . . and it was right here.”

  “I knew that thing was pure evil,” said Eleanor.

  “Stop it, Bren,” Cordelia said. “You’re scaring your sister, and the rest of us need to sleep! Keep your dreams to yourself.”

  “I wasn’t dreaming! And I bet the skeleton’s still in the room—”

  “Where?”

  They all looked around. No sign.

  “Remember last month?” Cordelia asked Brendan. “You dreamed about that old Mickey Mouse wizard cartoon, and you started crying ‘Mommy! Mommy!’”

  “Okay, whatever,” said Brendan, glancing quickly to Will. “Go back to sleep for all I care.”

  Cordelia and Will both mumbled and did so. But Eleanor reached her hand out to Brendan’s. “I believe you.”

  Brendan squeezed Eleanor’s fingers as she dozed off, her breathing slowly becoming regular. Once he was certain she was asleep, he gently laid her hand at her side and slipped out of bed.

  Brendan grabbed the Maglite, tiptoed to the opposite side of the bed, and extended his hand toward Will’s holster. He wasn’t going to go on this mission without being armed. He remembered Will’s warning about the seriousness of guns, and how things had gone wrong with the grenade, but he would be more cautious this time. It wasn’t a matter of breaking the rules. It was a matter of survival.

  Brendan removed the Webley exceedingly carefully, making sure not to wake the pilot. Then he inched out of the bedroom and down the spiral stairs, flashlight in one hand, trembling gun in the other, thinking about, of all things, the astronomer Galileo.

  Galileo was one of Brendan’s historical heroes. When the guy was brought to the Inquisition for making too much trouble about the earth moving around the sun, he supposedly put his head down, apologized, and then, under his breath, said, “And yet it moves!”

  Later historians concluded the entire incident was an urban legend, but Brendan didn’t buy that. Galileo was too smart, too brave, too manly to just sit back and let other people tell him how things worked when he knew the real deal. Brendan sometimes wondered what that would be like: to be in a room full of people who believed the wrong thing and know that you were right. Now, walking alone through Kristoff House to the secret hallway, he did. They can say whatever they want about that skeleton—but it moved! And it told me something important. . . .

  It belongs in the attic.

  The journey through the hallway was easier this time. Brendan had been down the path before; that made all the difference. He went to the closet where Will had re-stashed the skeleton and opened the door with the Webley drawn, nervous finger on the trigger, surprised at the weight of the weapon.

  “Come out with your hands up!”

  The skeleton crumpled at Brendan’s feet.

  “So what was that all about?” he asked, pointing the gun at the bones. “Why do you want to go up to the attic?”

  The skeleton lay still. Silent.

  “Was it some kind of sign? Some kind of clue?”

  No answer from the bones.

  “Fine. Make me do this the hard way.”

  Brendan heaved the skeleton over his shoulder and carried it down the hall, wincing as its bony appendages poked and pinched his skin. He stopped when something glinted on the floor: the tooth Eleanor had pulled out of her ear.

  “You’ll be needing that,” Brendan said, leaning down to pocket the tooth. He found that talking to his passenger kept him from being scared. “I knew I wasn’t dreaming about you, Skeletor, so I figured you had to be a vision. And I thought, If you’re a vision, you’ve gotta be telling me something. And maybe you’re like that bat skeleton . . . maybe if I take you up to the attic, you’ll come back to life. Maybe that’s a special power that this house has in this world. And maybe you’re Denver Kristoff, or Rutherford Walker, or somebody else who can help us get outta here!”

  Brendan went upstairs, bypassing the master bedroom for the attic. Slayne’s men had turned what had once been the attic steps into a gaping hole. Brendan tossed the bones up and piled debris into a makeshift step stool, grunting as he worked. Finally he managed to hoist himself into the attic, collapsing next to the skeleton. He turned off the Maglite and pointed Will’s gun at the grinning skull.

  “So you and me, we’re just gonna stay here like this . . . all night. And at some point, if you feel like coming back to life, or just getting up and telling me what’s going on, I’ll be ready to listen.”

  The skeleton’s chipped head seemed almost to hear him. As Brendan peered at it, he started to drift off—and then he remembered.

  “Your tooth! Right, sorry. If you do speak, I don’t want you talking with a lisp. I want to understand everything you say.”

  He inserted the tooth into the skeleton’s mouth, smiling at the smile he’d re-created, and then laid his head down and found the wood floor softer than any pillow. The sense he’d had earlier of not being able to sleep was reversed; now, with his strange mission completed, he could have slept through a fireworks display . . . and then, suddenly, the attic was lit up by the morning sun.

  Brendan awoke, turned over, and gasped.

  Overnight the skeleton had come back to life. But it hadn’t turned into Denver Kristoff or Rutherford Walker. It was now a pale, terrified-looking, and very naked redhead.

  “Uh . . . ,” Brendan said. “Who are you? Are you okay?”

  The redhead snapped her eyes open, covered herself, kicked Brendan with her bare feet, and screamed even louder than he had the night before. “Helllllp!”

  In the master bedroom, Will snapped up. “Cordelia! Eleanor!”

  “What?” they asked, rubbing their eyes. Then they heard the shrieking upstairs, as if a very angry young woman were defending herself with a high-decibel assault . . . and with small household objects, which bounced off the walls. Brendan shouted in pain.

  “That’s Bren!” Cordelia said. “Sounds like he’s in trouble.
”

  “But who’s the girl?” asked Eleanor.

  “Hopefully not that blasted Wind Witch!” said Will as he leaped off the mattress. “Follow me!” He reached for his gun—and suddenly got very angry. “Brendan!”

  Upstairs, Brendan was backed into a corner, trying to swat away tchotchkes and busted bureau pieces that the reanimated redhead threw at him. She was turned sideways, going for anything she could grab with one hand and covering her body with the other.

  “Stop ogling me, you debased child!”

  “Stop throwing stuff at me and I won’t have to—ow!”

  “What have you done with my clothes? Where is Mr. Kristoff?!”

  “Dead! Ow! I’ll ask my sister for clothes! What’s your name?”

  “I’m asking questions, not you!” The redhead picked up the Maglite—

  “Stop!” Brendan ordered, his voice cracking. “That’s our only one!” Hands shaking, he pointed the gun at the woman—

  BLAM.

  Brendan had no idea how it had happened. His fingers must have slipped. As soon as he heard the shot, he knew it had been wrong to steal the gun. It kicked back with a fearsome snap, like an angry little animal.

  The shot went into the ceiling; Brendan had no idea how to aim. The bullet hit a hanging light—a metal globe on a chain—and the light fell on the red-haired woman. The glass had already been shattered by the colossus attack, but the frame made her slump to the floor.

  “No!” Brendan yelled, tossing aside the gun (it was hot) and running over. “I’m so sorry—please, wake up—I didn’t mean to—I shouldn’t have taken that gun—I don’t even—Errr!”

  The woman kicked him in the groin.

  In imitation of Will, Brendan managed a single “Crikey!” before crumpling to the floor. The woman stood over him, lifting the dented light fixture. A trickle of blood ran down her forehead, but that wasn’t going to stop her from slamming the fixture into Brendan’s face—

  “Stop!” Will ordered.

  He had climbed into the attic with Eleanor and Cordelia. The woman looked at him, dropped the light, and covered herself.