House of Secrets

“She went somewhere.”

“It was the light. It played a trick on you.”

“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.

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“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. Mum 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 coat-rack with curlicues, and a marble bust of a man with a wavy beard, which screamed philosopher. All of it was lit by spotlights, 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 antique shop 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 realised that they had turned around, doubling back from the great hall. Crystal vases, alabaster sculptures and a mounted suit of armour had distracted him… and so had the stone angel he knew was out there, reaching out 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 all the Walkers except Brendan, who lingered by the view of the bridge. Growing up in San Francisco, he’d got used to seeing it every day, but from this angle, so close he was almost beneath it, the bridge’s salmon colour 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 was built, 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, realising 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 brass 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 updraughts.

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

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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 the age of 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 edition 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 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?”