“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.
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?”
“Sure,” Dr Walker said.
“Can we make only cookies here?”
“Viking, Electrolux, Sub-Zero,” Diane checked off, leading the family past the stainless-steel, double-doored fridge. Brendan wondered if there might be something weird inside it, like a head, so he peeked… but he didn’t see anything more disturbing than clinical emptiness.
Diane took the Walkers upstairs. The contemporary decor of the kitchen was instantly lost in a spiral wooden staircase that Eleanor insisted on climbing up and down and up again. The spiral stairs were wider than any the Walkers had ever seen; they served as the main stairs between the first and second floors. Upstairs, a broad hallway ran the length of the house, ending at a bay window and another, smaller staircase that led back down to the great hall.
The walls featured old portraits, in colour, with a faded pastel tint. In one, a grim-faced man with a square beard stood next to a lady in a frilled dress gripping a buggy. In the next, the same lady looked over her shoulder on a wharf as men in newsboy caps eyed her. In a third, an elderly woman sat beneath a tree holding a baby in a dress and bonnet.
“The Kristoff family,” Diane explained, noting Brendan and Cordelia’s fascination. “That’s Denver Kristoff” – the man with the square beard – “his wife, Eliza May” – the woman on the wharf – “and his mother” – the woman under the tree with the baby. “I forget her name. Anyway. The pictures are just for show. When you move in – if you move in – you can put up pictures of your own family.”
Brendan tried to imagine Walker photos on the wall: him and Dad at a lacrosse game with Dr Walker holding the stick incorrectly; Cordelia yelling at Mum because she didn’t want her picture taken without make-up; Eleanor crossing her eyes and smiling too wide. If you took stupid pictures and added a hundred years, did they end up looking eerie and important?
“There are three bedrooms on this floor,” Diane said. “The master—”
“Only three? You guys promised me I’d have my own room,” Brendan said.
“The fourth is upstairs. In the attic.” Diane pulled a string on the ceiling. A trapdoor swung down, followed by steps that folded out to lightly kiss the floor.
“Cool!” Brendan said. He climbed the ladder hand over fist.
Cordelia entered one of the bedrooms off the hall. It wasn’t the master (which had a king-size bed and two bedside tables) but it was a nice-sized room with fleur-de-lis wallpaper. She said, “I’ll take this one.”
“Then which one is mine?” Eleanor asked.
“Guys, this is all hypothetical…” Dr Walker tried, but Cordelia pointed Eleanor to the third bedroom, which was more of a maid’s bedroom – or a closet.
“I’m stuck with the smallest?”
“You are the smallest.”
“Mum! It’s not fair! How come I get the little room?”
“Cordelia’s a big girl. She needs space,” Mrs Walker said.
“Hear that, Cordelia? Mum says you need to go on a diet!” Brendan called from the attic.
“Bren, shut up! She means I’m older!”
Alone, upstairs, Brendan smiled… but then the attic began to hold his attention. It had a rollaway bed set up by the window, a bureau with various ornaments on top, and a bat skeleton on a shelf jutting out of the wall.
The bat skeleton was mounted on a smooth black rock with its wings outstretched. Its head tilted up like it was catching bugs. It was one of the creepiest things Brendan had ever seen… but he wasn’t scared. He pulled out his phone to take a picture.
“Brendan, apologise to your sister!” Mrs Walker yelled, and Eleanor joined in: “Yeah, Bren, get down here!”
Of course when he wasn’t scared of something, there was no one around to be impressed. Brendan descended the ladder. Cordelia glared at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You don’t need to go on a diet. But – look what they have upstairs! I took a picture—”
Cordelia grabbed