Ned Vizzini - House of Secrets

“You mean your decision,” said Brendan. “We had no part in it.”

“Fine,” said Dr Walker. “But speak now if you have a problem.”

“If we moved in, wouldn’t it be Walker House?” asked Eleanor.

“I think we should call it one twenty-eight Sea Cliff Avenue, its proper address,” said Mrs Walker. “Otherwise it sounds like we’re moving into something that belongs to someone else.”

It does belong to someone else, thought Brendan. The old crone. But he didn’t want to sound scared. He said, “I like it fine. Better than this dump.”

“I like it too,” Eleanor said. She was using a sauce-dipped spring roll to gather up as much shredded carrot and celery as possible; it looked like the spring roll was wearing a wig. “The faster we move in there, the faster we can get Misty.”

“Nell, how many times do we have to go through this—”

“But Mum said I could get her. Mum made me picture her—”

“You’ll get your horse some day,” Mrs Walker said, “if you eat your spring roll and stop playing with it.”

Eleanor tackled the spring roll in four huge bites. She looked at her mother and spoke with a full mouth: “Do I get my horse now?”

Everybody laughed – even Brendan. You’d have a hard time getting them to admit it, but the Walkers liked dinners this way, quick and greasy, instead of with cloth napkins with rings.

“What about you, Cordelia?” Dr Walker asked.

“Let me show you something.” Cordelia ducked out of the room and returned with an old book. It had a black cover, no dust jacket, and gold lettering nearly worn off the spine.

“Savage Warriors by Denver Kristoff,” Cordelia announced. “First edition, 1910. I took it from the library. And look!” She pulled out her MacBook Air. “On Powell’s Books they’re selling this for five hundred dollars! So that library alone is worth, like, the closing cost of the house!”

“Cordelia,” Brendan said, “you stole from the Kristoff House library?”

“You don’t steal from libraries. You borrow. Not that you would know.”

“No, your brother’s right,” said Dr Walker. “It’s not our house yet, and you shouldn’t have taken that—”

“That’s right you shouldn’t!” Brendan stood up. “Somebody might be really mad at you for stealing! You ever think of that?”

“Seriously, Bren?” Cordelia smirked. “Since when do you have a moral compass?”

Brendan didn’t answer – partly because he didn’t know what a moral compass was, partly because he was terrified of the old crone. Maybe she was a homeless lady, but maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she lived at 128 Sea Cliff Avenue. Maybe she didn’t take kindly to curious girls stealing books from her library. Brendan almost spoke up then about seeing her, about how he could still feel her hand around his wrist, about how that wrist felt cold even now, about how she had said “Walker” like it meant something… but he didn’t want to be made fun of. He would handle the crone himself when they moved in. Like a man.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s just… it’s not right to steal.”

“That’s true,” Dr Walker said, “and Cordelia, you’ll be putting that book back next week.”

“What happens next week?”

“We’re moving in.”

Spartan Movers was a removal company in San Francisco, the name of which was a source of huge embarrassment for Cordelia. “Why don’t we just go with Low-rent Movers?” she asked her mum. But when she saw the truck, she realised it wasn’t spartan like self-denying; it was Spartan like a citizen of ancient Sparta, with a plumed helmet for a logo.

The Spartan truck pulled up in front of Kristoff House, and a trio of burly men got out. The Walkers were already there, eager to get their stuff moved in. Brendan was more eager than anyone: he had visions of turning his attic bedroom into a teenage man cave where he could happily ignore the rest of his family. He started trailing one of the removal men as the man carried a bag of lacrosse equipment into the house.

“That goes in my room, the attic,” Brendan said.

“No problemo,” said the man, eyeing Kristoff House. It looked the same, except the lawn needed mowing. Brendan’s dad would probably make him do it.

“Nice place,” the man said. He was clearly one of those people who liked to talk. “Most folks are downsizing these days. But you guys are moving up.”

“Back up,” corrected Brendan as they walked down the path. When Dr Walker looked over, Brendan gave a big smile, pretending to help the mover with the bag. “We used to live in a place like this.”

“What happened?”

“There was an incident,” said Brendan, before realising he’d said too much.

“Oh yeah? What kinda incident?” asked the man. “Your old man was running schemes on the stock market and he got caught?”

“No.”

“He did time in the joint for tax fraud?”

“Oh, no—”

“Did he wear a scuba suit to check the mail? Was he riding his bicycle naked in circles? What?”

Brendan stopped short: “Yes. Yes, you totally nailed it. Riding his bike naked in circles.”

The removal man nodded and frowned as if he knew Brendan didn’t want to hear any more from him. They moved into the kitchen… and Brendan’s mind went back to the day that had changed everything.

Dr Walker had been a surgeon at John Muir Medical Center. His speciality had been gastric bypass surgery; he’d been heading for a senior position – but then one day he fell asleep in the break room during a shift and woke up standing over a patient, holding a bloody scalpel.

He had carved a symbol into the man’s stomach.

It was an eye, with an iris and pupil in the centre and half-circles above and below.

Brendan had come home from school and found his mother and sisters in tears. His father couldn’t remember disfiguring the man’s stomach; Dr Walker had been taking sleeping pills to help him rest, and they had made him sleepwalk.

The patient had sued, of course. Dr Walker had lost his job. The lawsuit was still pending, and the Walkers had spent so much money fighting it that they’d been forced to sell their old home and their two cars. It was so weird – so crazy and unlikely – that Brendan still had trouble believing it had really happened, even though he was living with the results.

“You know, I heard weird stuff about this place,” the removal man said as they walked along the upstairs hall, past the portraits of the Kristoff family.

“What?” Brendan asked.

“Maybe I’m no Harvard grad, but I’m a real good listener and an even better eavesdropper. And I heard this house was cursed. That’s why the last family left.”

“You believe in that stuff? Curses?”

“In San Francisco? With all kinds of hippies and freaks running around? Anybody could get cursed.”

Brendan had a question, but he wasn’t sure if he could ask it without sounding crazy. He pulled the string so the attic stairs came down and went into the attic with the removal man.

“Where you want the hockey stuff?” the mover asked.

“Lacrosse,” Brendan said. “Put it anywhere.” The man put it by the window. Then Brendan said, “If this place is cursed, how do I fix it?”

The man didn’t seem to think that question was weird. “Best way to fix a curse is to find the person who set it up,” he said, shrugging. Then he left Brendan to think about the old crone.

Out on the pavement, the removal man returned to the Spartan truck for his next item: a white trunk with bands of riveted bronze. It had rounded metal corners and the faded initials RW stencilled over a hefty lock.