house is on the edge of a cliff. It seems very precarious. And what would happen in an earthquake? We’d slide right into the ocean!”
“The house emerged from the quake of 1989 without a scratch,” Diane said. “The engineering is superb. Come inside; let’s take a look.”
Intrigued, the Walkers followed her up the path towards the house, past the big pine trees. Brendan noticed something odd about the lawn. It took him a minute to realise… there was no For Sale sign. What kind of house goes on sale without a sign?
“This is a three-storey, Victorian-style property,” Diane declared, “known locally as Kristoff House. It was built in 1907, after the Great Quake, by a gentleman who survived it.”
Dr Walker nodded. His family, too, had survived the Great San Francisco Earthquake generations before. They had moved away, but work had brought Dr Walker back. Work he no longer had.
“Two eighteen!” Eleanor said, pointing at the address hanging over the front door.
“One twenty-eight,” Cordelia corrected gently.
Eleanor huffed and looked down at her feet. Diane continued her monologue on the front steps, but Cordelia hung back and knelt beside her sister. This might be a “teachable moment”, as Cordelia’s English teacher Ms Kavanaugh liked to say. Since one of the effects of Eleanor’s dyslexia was that she read things backwards, Cordelia figured there must be a simple psychological trick that could get her to read perfectly. They just hadn’t found it yet. Brendan lingered, eager to see Cordelia fail.
“Can you try reading it backwards?” she encouraged.
“It’s not that simple, Deal. You think you know everything!”
“Well, I have read books about this, and I’m trying to help—”
“Then where were you at school last week?”
“What? What’re you talking—”
“This stupid substitute teacher in my stupid English class called on me to read from Little House on the Prairie. And I couldn’t do it.”
As she said the words, Eleanor remembered that day at school. Ms Fitzsimmons had been off sick, and Eleanor had been too scared to tell the sub teacher that she had problems reading, so she went in front of the class and held the book and waited for magic to happen. She thought maybe somehow, just once, magic would happen and she’d be able to read a sentence the right way. But the words looked as mixed-up as they always did – not backwards, Cordelia, she thought, mixed-up – and when she tried to read the title, the first four words came out right, but the last one came out like a swear word. The whole class laughed and Eleanor dropped the book and ran out of the room and the sub teacher sent her to the principal and everybody was still calling her that swear word.
Cordelia spoke in a quiet voice: “Oh, Eleanor… I’m so sorry. But I can’t be with you in class.”
“No, you can’t! So don’t pretend you can fix me!”
Cordelia winced. Brendan, amused by her failure, prepared to deliver a cutting remark, but before he could—
“What’s that?” Eleanor exclaimed.
Brendan and Cordelia glanced over in time to see a figure streaking from one of the pine trees to the side of the house. A flash of shadow. Too fast to be a person. A car honked on Sea Cliff Avenue behind them.
“That was probably just the car’s shadow, Nell,” said Brendan. “Jumping from the tree to the house.”
“No, it wasn’t. It was a person. And it was bald,” insisted Eleanor.
“You saw a bald guy?”
“Girl. An old woman. Staring at us. And now she’s behind the house.”
Brendan and Cordelia glanced at each other, each expecting the other to be making a ‘silly Eleanor’ face. But they were both as deadly serious as their sister.
They looked at the side of Kristoff House. The silhouette of a dark figure stood there. Watching them.
Brendan took a deep breath and tried to stay calm, strong. The figure remained still. “Hello?” he called, stepping off the path and pulling Eleanor with him, Cordelia following close behind. “Is someone there?”
He was trying to use his toughest voice, but it cracked – more Sesame Street than Schwarzenegger. He cleared his throat to cover it as he and his siblings crept to the side of the house.
The figure was nothing but an old statue. A Gothic angel, looming two metres tall, carved from grey stone stained with streaks of green and black. It had wings folded behind it and arms stretched forward, with the right hand broken off. Its face was worn down, chinless and lipless, eroded by decades of San Francisco wind and fog. Mossy patches covered its eyes.
“Beautiful,” said Cordelia.
Brendan wiped his forehead, surprised to find it covered in sweat. It was stupid, but he’d expected to see the person Eleanor had described: a bald woman, a crone. His imagination ran away with him a little and he could even picture this woman pointing a crooked finger and hissing, “Here are the suckers who will finally buy this house!”
“See, Nell? It’s just a statue. There’s no one here,” Brendan said, putting his hand on Eleanor’s shoulder.
“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.
“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
