tried to hide her exasperation with a smile. “Shall we continue?”
The family followed her down the hall, passing a knob sticking out of a square cut into the wall. “What’s that?” Eleanor asked.
“Dumbwaiter,” Diane said curtly.
They reached the end of the hall. “That’s it,” Diane said, glancing out of the bay window at the Walkers’ used Toyota, then back to Dr Walker. “You haven’t asked the critical question.”
“The price,” Dr Walker said dolefully. Truth was, when he’d heard “rustic” and “charming”, he’d thought the same thing as Cordelia: that the house was a fixer-upper he could afford. But two storeys plus an attic, fully furnished, with a library and bridge views, in Sea Cliff? This was a five-million-dollar residence.
Diane said, “The owners are asking three hundred thousand.”
Brendan saw a look of disbelief ripple across his father’s face. Then Dr Walker pulled himself together and put on his business voice. It was good to hear. Brendan used to hear it often, when his dad did interviews or advised other surgeons, but for the last month, since ‘the incident’, Dr Walker hadn’t had occasion to make those sorts of calls. Now he spoke with purpose.
“Ms Dobson, we’ll take it. Please draw up the papers and we’ll close as soon as possible.”
“Wonderful!” Diane opened a silver case to give Dr Walker a business card. Mrs Walker hugged her husband.
Eleanor asked, “What’s that mean? We got the house? We’re going to live here?”
Brendan stepped forward. “Why is it so cheap?”
“Bren!” Mrs Walker snapped.
“It’s the same price as an apartment. Less, even. It doesn’t add up. What are you trying to pull?”
“Your family’s inquisitiveness is welcome,” said Diane. “Brendan, the owners are trying to liquidate their investment. Like many families they’ve fallen on hard times, and they’re willing to drop the price to get out – especially if it means helping others in a tough spot. You may have noticed that there’s no For Sale sign on the lawn. The owners aren’t looking to sell to any family – they’re looking for the right family. A family in need.”
She smiled. Brendan hated being the object of her pity. It would have been one thing if she only pitied him – that he could deal with – but she pitied all of them. And that was because of his father. It was so embarrassing. Dr Walker was trying to do it all backwards: reverse-engineer his reputation by getting an impressive house to land an impressive job at an impressive hospital with an administration that was impressed by his renown and willing to overlook ‘the incident’. But he couldn’t even impress this estate agent. Brendan felt like he’d be better off on his own, or maybe at boarding school like some of his friends. But there was no way his parents could afford boarding school.
Diane led the Walkers downstairs, through the great hall, to the front entrance. “I think you’ll find Kristoff House a wonderful home.”
“We shouldn’t take it,” Brendan whispered to Cordelia. “You know Dad’s not thinking right these days. There’s something fishy here.”
“You’re just scared.”
“What? Me? No.”
“Sure you are. You don’t want to live with that creepy angel on the lawn.”
“Excuse me? There was a bat skeleton in the attic and I wasn’t scared of that.”
“So? Doesn’t prove anything. Nell, wasn’t Bren scared of that statue?”
Eleanor nodded.
“I rest my case.”
There was no way Brendan was going to let Cordelia have the last word. As his family walked out of the front door and headed down the pebbled path, he split off and ran to the stone angel, pulling out his phone to take another picture. He’d put his arm around the thing and grin and show the world he wasn’t frightened of a hunk of rock with moss accents.
Except the stone angel wasn’t there.
Brendan suppressed the urge to call out. Maybe he was just confused. Maybe the statue was on the other side of the house. But no: he remembered the broken hand was the right hand, and that it was a few inches from the exterior wall. Who moved the statue?
Brendan knelt to investigate the pine needles that carpeted the ground. There should have been a clear imprint where the base of the statue had been, where the needles were flat and damp, maybe with pill bugs scurrying around, but it looked like the statue had simply never been there—
Suddenly a face appeared. Inches from Brendan’s own, hissing, its voice like a swarm of wasps leaving hell.
“You don’t belong here.”
She was a bone-white old woman, as tall as the stone angel, bald, with cracked lips pulled back over brown teeth. She stared at Brendan with glistening steel-blue eyes. She wore dirty layers of rags and no shoes; her toenails were amber, encrusted with soil. She was the crone that Brendan had feared, but a hundred times worse, and when she spoke, her breath was fouler than six-month-old compost.
“Leave this place!”
She wrapped her hand around Brendan’s wrist. It felt like a rope. He tried to pull away, but she held him fast… and then she looked into his eyes. “Who are you?” she asked more quietly.
“B-Brendan Walker,” he said.
“Walker?” she repeated.
Brendan had never been so scared. Not scared stiff – beyond that, scared into action, like someone had shot a spike of adrenalin into his back. He twisted and wrested his hand free. He ran, spit flying out of the side of his mouth. “Mum! Dad!”
Surely they’d seen her: she was a six-foot baldy with the body-mass index of a skeleton; she’d be tough to miss. He reached his family back at the Toyota after running across the lawn, which suddenly seemed to be the size of a football field.
“Bren, what’s wrong?”
“Are you OK?!”
“I – you guys – you didn’t—?” Brendan looked back. Suddenly the whole scene looked much smaller and safer to him. It couldn’t have been more than twenty metres from the pavement to the house. The whole time he’d been running, his heart pounding in his chest, still seeing the old crone’s face in front of him… that had been only seconds.
And the woman was gone.
The sun had moved. The side of Kristoff House was bathed in shadow. The stone angel might have been there or it might not. Shadows hid all sorts of things.
“Brendan…? Did something happen?” That was Cordelia. She was looking at him seriously; she knew he was freaked. Brendan started to explain – but what would be the point? He couldn’t prove anything. He didn’t want to sound like a little kid.
“Nothing,” he said. “I just… I thought I lost this.”
He turned on his PSP. He had never been happier to see the title screen of Uncharted. Back in a world that he understood and controlled, he slipped into the car.
A funny thing happened to Brendan on the drive back from 128 Sea Cliff Avenue. Every second that he put between himself and the old crone, he became more and more convinced that she hadn’t