House of Secrets by Ned Vizzini, Chris Columbus Read Free Book Online Page B

Agreed?”
    “Agreed,” said Brendan and Cordelia. They all opened their eyes and kept searching.
    They didn’t find anything in the other bedrooms or bathrooms (Eleanor did pull her dolls out of the dumbwaiter, which pleased her), so the only place left was the attic. Brendan pulled the string, brought down the steps, and led them up.
    “What time is it?” Cordelia asked. The attic was a wreck. The rollaway bed was tossed into a corner.
    “I don’t know, why?”
    “Because it looks like daylight outside.” Cordelia nodded to the window. The shutters were closed, as were all the shutters in the house, as if the Wind Witch had tried to conceal the mayhem she had caused. Thin shafts of sunlight shone through the slats—and through the translucent white curtains that were on every window. Did we get through the night? Brendan wondered. He’d never been so happy to think about dawn in his life. He walked to the window—and ducked as a small black shape dive-bombed him.
    “A bat!” Brendan yelped. “Watch out, guys!”
    Cordelia screamed way louder than Brendan or Eleanor expected, then hurtled toward the attic steps.
    The bat, which couldn’t have been more than three inches long, plummeted toward her. Cordelia slapped at her face and nearly broke her neck tumbling down the steps before closing the attic door behind her. “Kill it!” she yelled.
    “Cordelia?” Brendan said. “It’s just a bat! What’s your problem?”
    “I hate bats!” Cordelia answered from downstairs. “Where did it come from?”
    Brendan looked at the stand where the bat skeleton had been. Sure enough, the stand was there. But the skeleton was gone.
    “Remember that bat skeleton I told you I saw? Well . . . I think it came to life.”
    “If it’s a magical zombie bat, you shouldn’t mess with it!” Cordelia said, running her fingers through her hair. She was sure she could feel the bat’s sinewy wings brushing against her scalp.
    In the attic, Brendan motioned for Eleanor to help him. They approached the window as the bat circled frantically. They opened the shutters; sunlight flooded the room. The bat retreated to a corner in the rafters.
    “Is it gone?” Cordelia asked from downstairs. “Can I come up?”
    But Brendan and Eleanor didn’t answer. They couldn’t. They were too busy staring out the window.
    A primeval forest lay outside Kristoff House.

T rees with trunks as thick as houses reached up so high that Brendan and Eleanor couldn’t see the tops no matter how they craned their necks. Beams of dappled light broke on giant ferns spread like green fans over mossy logs. It looked like the painted background in a dinosaur exhibit, still and calm and even a bit fake. Trees marched into the distance, blending into a uniform brown-and-green curtain.
    “Where are we?” gasped Eleanor.
    Brendan opened the window. Sounds swept in: caws, chirps, and rustlings in the air.
    Downstairs, Cordelia noticed that her siblings were unusually quiet, so she went back into the attic to see what was going on. “Hello?” she said, stepping to the window. “Whoa.”
    The trees started just a few feet from the house. Smaller trees stood below them, where the honey-hued light broke through. A thin haze lay at eye level, listing up and down. They could make out the sound of a brook babbling in the distance and, behind the caws and chirps, a loud, grating buzz. The haze entered the attic, carrying a tang of dirt and pine and a balm of sweet flowers and sap.
    “Where’s our street?” whispered Eleanor.
    “Maybe the Wind Witch moved our house somewhere,” Cordelia said.
    “Jurassic Park?” asked Eleanor.
    “Humboldt County.”
    “Does Humboldt County have those ?” Brendan pointed to one of the towering trees in the distance. Circling it was the source of the buzzing—a monstrous dragonfly with the wingspan of a condor.
    The dragonfly’s body was dull green, its wings clear mesh. It drifted up and down as it circled around the