look so … so weird—”
“Weird?” Dr Walker turned towards her. “You think I look weird?”
Eleanor glanced behind her. Mrs Leland had left the stables. The door at that end was locked. When Eleanor turned back, her father was locking the door at the other end, trapping them inside. And then he started coming towards her.
“Eleanor, I want you to listen carefully,” Dr Walker said.
Eleanor backed up, terrified. The stables weren’t supposed to be completely closed. Not ever. It was dark inside; the only light shone through cracks in the wood. The horses whinnied and reared up on their hind legs – NEIGHHHHEHEHEHEHEHE!
“Daddy! What’s wrong? Stop—”
“Don’t talk, listen. Or on second thoughts” – he chuckled, a nasty gurgling sound – “watch.”
Dr Walker dug his nails into his chin. Eleanor couldn’t turn away. Even in the weak light she could see how the skin puckered around each of his fingernails, and then there was a tearing sound and Dr Walker pulled his chin off, revealing something darker underneath.
“Dad!”
Dr Walker wasn’t finished. He tore his hand into his cheek, gripping and pulling – and his cheek came off. He tossed it into some hay and grabbed his nose. That came off quickly. Then his other cheek … his ear … his scalp – he wrenched his whole face off as if it were a cheap mask of Silly Putty.
And now … the man’s real face was visible.
The Storm King’s face.
Eleanor screamed. The horses screamed with her.
Denver Kristoff was staring right at her with his orange eyes and his purple, pitted, deformed skin. The flaps that served as his nose wheezed up and down.
Eleanor dropped to her knees. Little pieces of hay poked into her. “Please don’t kill me.”
“Kill you?” Denver Kristoff said. “After all you’ve been through … you still fear death? Trust me. There are worse things.”
He curled his mouth into a smile – or a Denver Kristoff smile, with one end of the mouth turned up, the other down. “I won’t kill you, as long as you answer one very important question.”
“What’s that?”
“Where is your sister?”
Brendan and Will hustled towards 624 Taylor Street, in downtown San Francisco. The landmark building, known as the Bohemian Club, had a huge guard in front of it, with a shaved head and big rings on each finger.
“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” said Brendan.
“It is if Cordelia’s inside,” said Will. The building was made of limestone and brick, occupying a whole city block. Carved in the facade above the door were an owl and an inscription: WEAVING SPIDERS COME NOT HERE.
“How did you know that was there?” asked Will.
“I know a lot about old San Francisco buildings,” Brendan said. “When Cordelia and I were little, we used to walk by this place and try to spot all the owls on the walls. And when we learned on our last adventure that this is where Denver Kristoff was trained by the Lorekeepers … I’ve been keeping a close eye on it ever since. Let’s look for a secret entrance.”
“What makes you think there is one?”
“US presidents were members of this club. They’d never go through the front door.”
“Can I help you?”
The guard approached. Up close, he was as big as two people stapled together.
“I noticed you lookin’ at the building,” he said. “You wanna walk away, or you wanna get free handicapped passes for life?”
“Free handicapped passes for life?!” Brendan shouted. “That means I don’t have to wait in line for roller coasters! That’s awesome … so what do I have to do?”
“Let me put you in a coma,” said the guard.
He grabbed for Brendan – and Brendan and Will took off running around the corner of the Bohemian Club. The guard came after them, gathering momentum with his trunk-like legs. They dashed into an alley at the side of the building and raced under bluish shadows, skirting smelly Dumpsters. Brendan glanced back – there was the guard, huffing his way forward, closing in fast. Brendan knocked over a garbage can – and then saw steam rising ahead. He noticed a nice smell too, very different from the reeking garbage …
“The laundry room!”
“What?”
“Follow me!”
Brendan ran up to a metal grate in the pavement. The steam was rising from it. He dropped to his knees, pulled up the grate, and revealed a ladder leading down.
“This way!”
Brendan started going down. Will followed. The guard came to where Brendan had knocked over the garbage can – and yelped as he slipped on some old kale soaked in vinaigrette and his legs whizzed out from under him. He hit the ground on his back, getting the wind knocked out of him.
“Urf! Huh … Huh!” (That’s about all you can say when the wind is knocked out of you.)
Down below, the ladder ended, and Brendan and Will crawled into an air duct that blew out laundry steam. They moved forward, coughing at the heat – and at the pieces of lint that blew into their faces. Within a few minutes it was getting very hot and stuffy, and Will started kicking frantically at a seam in the duct. Brendan realised that it could be a very slow death for both of them: They would collapse in the air duct and suffocate; their bodies wouldn’t be discovered for months; then, instead of the pleasant odour of laundry, the smell of their rotting corpses would pour out …
Finally Will’s kicks worked and the seam split open. They slid out of the air duct, hitting the concrete floor below.
“We – kaff koff – we did it!” Brendan managed.
They were inside the Bohemian Club. But you wouldn’t know it from the laundry room. It looked like any other laundry room. Only when Brendan led the way out did they find themselves in the place they had expected.
The walls were deep rich mahogany with mother-of-pearl inlays. Bookshelves were placed throughout, holding leather-bound volumes with spines embossed in gold and silver. Between the shelves were items on pedestals: Greek warrior statues, daggers encased in glass, and preserved animals in jars.
Brendan pointed to the ceiling: cameras. He and Will hugged the wall and walked sideways next to each other. They were totally silent, until they passed one of the preserved animals and saw that it was a muskrat with two heads.
Brendan screamed. Will put a hand over his mouth.
“Quiet now, they probably just took two of those creatures and sewed them together.”
“Then why does one of them have a normal head … and the other one is all small and shrivelled up and weird-looking?”
Brendan shook his shoulders to get the chills out. Up next was a staircase, which led to a hallway full of disturbing taxidermy, including an owl with a glass lens in its belly and a mouse skeleton inside it. That hallway led to another staircase. Brendan and Will went up to the second floor, where they heard someone talking.
They were in a corridor that was open on one side, facing a breathtaking main hall with a crystal chandelier. The entire building was arranged