House of Secrets

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 twenty metres 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.

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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 OK.

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.

“Mum?” 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 OK?” Brendan asked.

“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 Mum and Dad?”

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

Brendan joined in: “Mum! 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 towards it. “Nell?”

“Mum?”

“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 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 Mum 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 unrecognisable as the living room, with the coat-rack 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.