House of Secrets (18 page)

When he heard a thundering crunch in the forest. Very big, very close.

“Oh no . . . ” Brendan looked at the book as he thought of his sisters. All of a sudden he knew he’d made a big mistake. His desire to open the book was too strong, too
weird
. Leaving his post at the door, coming out here to blow up a cliff . . . he’d left his sisters vulnerable—
abandoned his duty
, as Will would say. And now something was coming.

Brendan flung the book down. “You stay away from me,” he said. “You’re totally evil.” He ran back to Kristoff House.

C
ordelia and Will burst through the front door and stopped dead, trying to process what they were seeing. Two enormous, crusty, bare feet were planted in the clearing in front of them. Each foot was nearly as big as Kristoff House itself. The legs that came up from them were redwood-sized and just as naked.

“A giant,” Will said.

“Bigger,” said Cordelia. “A colossus.”

Cordelia was terrified to look up and see
more
naked parts, but when she did, she saw that the colossus was wearing a loincloth, tied under him like a diaper—and he was even taller than the trees. Cordelia couldn’t see past the loincloth.

Brendan suddenly appeared, racing out of the forest. He looked up at the colossus, saw Will and Cordelia on the front porch, and didn’t stop running. He knew the monster could stamp him flat with one step—but he couldn’t risk getting separated from his family.

“Rrrrrrr?”
he heard from above, a huge sound like machinery, as the colossus picked up one foot—

But Brendan was already on the front porch, dashing inside with Cordelia and Will.

“Bren! Where were you?”

PTOOSH!
The foot hit the ground outside the door.

“I’m sorry!” Brendan said. “I got distracted with that grenade—”

“Distracted? You set it off!”
Will shouted, as the colossus thudded its huge hand into the ground outside, shadowing the hallway.

“Sorry,” Brendan said. “It was something I’ve always wanted to do—”

“Please tell me you used it for something that will help us?” said Will.

“Not exactly,” said an embarrassed Brendan. “I wanted to see how big of a hole I could blow in the side of a cliff.”

“You wasted a perfectly good grenade because you wanted to see something explode?!”

“Kind of, yeah.”

“Bren!”
Cordelia said. “Maybe that grenade could’ve stopped the colossus!”

Before Brendan could tell them the part about seeing
The Book of Doom and Desire
, a rumbling threw them all off balance. It was like an earthquake—the whole ground shook—and then the floor of Kristoff House tilted upward. Brendan, Cordelia, and Will tried to keep their footing, but it was as if the house were on a seesaw and something heavy were in the kitchen.

“What’s happening?” Will yelled. He and Cordelia grabbed the wall to steady themselves as Brendan tumbled down the hall.

“It’s the colossus from
Savage Warriors
! And he’s lifting the house from that corner!” Brendan said, pointing as broken tables and vases and books slid past him.

“Nell!” Cordelia called. “If you’re in the dumbwaiter . . . get out!”

Eleanor didn’t answer—and suddenly Cordelia grabbed Will as the floor’s angle got too steep and they all began to slide toward the kitchen. Brendan was terrified that the floor was going to go vertical and make them fall, like in that old video game
Castlevania
, but all of a sudden it became level again. Everyone paused to take a breath—and then the floor began to tilt in the opposite direction!

“I gotta see what’s going on!” Brendan called. He felt horribly guilty—more guilty than scared—and that guilt pushed him back to the front door.

“Bren! It’s not safe!” Cordelia warned, but her brother stumbled out—and he wasn’t in the forest anymore.

Brendan stood where the welcome mat would be if Kristoff House had one. In front of him, instead of downed trees, he saw the hand of the colossus. Its fingers were pressed together to make the leathery, springy wall they had seen before.

Brendan ran and jump-kicked the hand.

“Stop!” Cordelia cried, watching from the doorway with Will—but Brendan bounced off, hitting the colossus’s palm.

“I’m trying to get him to put us down!” he explained. Behind him, as if they had felt the kick, the colossus’s fingers separated.

Cordelia gasped. Through the fingers was blue, clear sky. Brendan inched forward, peered down—

And saw the forest canopy.
Below him.

“H
ey! Up here!” a voice called. Brendan, Cordelia, and Will turned to see Eleanor leaning out one of the second-story windows. “Do you guys realize there’s this big, ugly, hairy guy carrying us around?”

“Yes!” they all said at once. Then Cordelia spoke. “Nell, are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Brendan asked, “How do you know he’s hairy?”

“I can
see
him from up here! He looks like that really skinny British guy on the cover of Dad’s old CDs. . . . That guy who sings about not getting enough satisfaction?”

“Mick Jagger?” Brendan asked.

“Yeah! He looks like Mick Jagger if Mick Jagger ate a whole truckful of Snickers.”

They rushed inside, went upstairs, and lurched down the second-floor hall, sometimes powering forward as the house tilted up, sometimes scrambling for something to hold on to as it tilted down. They were relieved when they made it to Eleanor’s room and found her staring out the window. “Look!”

From the second story they could see much better. Four of the colossus’s jumbo fingers made up the wall, over which they could barely glimpse the sky. The house sat in the colossus’s immense palm.

“He’s carrying us through the forest like a giant Domino’s pizza!”

“Nell,” Cordelia said, “you can’t be enjoying this.”

“Why not? Maybe he’s taking us home!”

“How do you know he’s a he?”

“I guess he could be a lady with a beard,” shrugged Eleanor, “but come see for yourself.”

She led them across the hall to the master bedroom. There they beheld the colossus in all his glory.

The view started with the base of his palm, which stuck out underneath the house like a limestone outcropping. Leading down from it, impossibly huge, was his foreshortened, tanned right arm. Brendan started calculating: in order to hold Kristoff House, the colossus had to have a hand that was fifty feet by fifty feet, and your arm was about six times as long as your palm, so . . .

“His arm’s the size of a thirty-story building!”

“Yeah, he’s like a mountain man who’s as big as an actual mountain,” said Eleanor.

The colossus’s flowing black hair draped over his bare shoulders, each of which was the size of a Mack truck. He didn’t look like he was going bald anytime soon. (With a direct view of the top of his head, they would’ve seen a carousel-sized bald spot.) Large white specks like giant snowflakes dotted his hair.

“Yeccchhhh! He’s got dandruff!” Brendan said, frowning. “With pieces as big as my head!”

The colossus’s voluminous hair obscured most of his face, but he definitely had black eyebrows, a wide, perfectly triangular nose, and crazy huge lips. He really did resemble a mammoth Mick Jagger.

“What’s that horrible smell?” asked Cordelia, placing her hand over her nose and mouth.

“He has body odor,” explained Eleanor.

“Smells like Mr. Benjamin, my third-grade science teacher,” said Brendan. “The guy was allergic to showers.”

The colossus took no notice of his passengers, forging ahead with his face just above the treetops, using his left hand to snap the trees aside as he traversed the sea of green. His movements were so Himalayan that he almost looked as if he were operating in slow motion. Cordelia felt dizzy. She wondered how his heart could pump blood to his entire body—
maybe it’s as big as Kristoff House and only beats once a minute.

“I think we should ride it out,” Cordelia said, “and hope he’s bringing us somewhere with food.”

“Unless he’s bringing us somewhere where
we’re
the food,” said Brendan.

“If you look at this with the proper perspective, it could be a tremendous opportunity,” said Will. “We’ve been trying to figure out where we are by reading books. Here’s a chance for direct observation.”

Will poked his body out the window, leaning so far that Cordelia grabbed him to keep him from falling. He held his palm over his eyes and swiveled his head 180 degrees to gaze as far as he could . . . but saw only the oppressive green trees.

“Forget it,” Will said as he slid back. “No sign of civilization. Maybe we
should
just ‘ride it out,’ as Cordelia suggests.”

Brendan rolled his eyes. His sister beamed.

“Can I see again?” asked Eleanor. She loved being up so high; it beat sitting around in the forest waiting for wolves. Taking Will’s place at the window, she stared down at the colossus, who she’d come to think of as her friend Fat Jagger—after all, he hadn’t done anything really bad, not yet. But then the house shuddered and became still.

“What’s happening?” Cordelia asked.

“I’m not sure. . . .”

Fat Jagger had stopped. He moved his left hand to his face. There was something wiggling between his giant finger and thumb. Eleanor saw it squirm, heard it buzz, and yelled,
“Ew, it’s a dragonfly!”
just before the colossus popped it in his mouth and chomped down. The insect squelched, squirting its juices across the treetops.

“He’s not vegan! He’s a meat eater!” Eleanor jumped back from the window. “Bren was right! He’s bringing us somewhere to
eat us
! Guys, if he likes bugs, how much better are
we
gonna taste?”

“Like juicy pineapple wrapped in bacon!” said Brendan. “We gotta do something.”

“Too bad we don’t have that grenade,” Cordelia said pointedly to Brendan, but Eleanor was already running down to the kitchen. When she came back, she had a hunk of limp meat wrapped in plastic.

Brendan asked, “Nell, what is that?”

“Pork tenderloin. From the freezer.”

“That freezer hasn’t worked for two days! That’s rotten!”

“He just ate a
dragonfly
!”

Eleanor went to the window and unwrapped the tenderloin. An unpleasant, sweet odor wafted into the room as she yelled,
“Hey! Mr. Colossus! Look up!”

The giant turned to her. For the first time the Walkers and Will saw his face. More than anything he looked like the homeless war vets they’d seen in downtown San Francisco, with sad, bloodshot eyes bordered by deep creases.

“Try this! From the Walkers!”

Eleanor dropped the tenderloin. It snaked through the air—and landed in Fat Jagger’s open mouth.

“Nice job!” Eleanor called. “D’ya want more?”

The colossus nodded, wobbling his arm (and the house). Eleanor tore out of the room. “I’m getting more!”

“Nell, wait, this isn’t a good idea—like you know how you’re not supposed to feed bears?” Brendan said, but his sister came back with a box of formerly frozen fish. She leaned out the window and let the yellow patties fall into Fat Jagger’s waiting maw.