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S partan Movers was a moving company in San Francisco, the name of which was a source of huge embarrassment for Cordelia. “Why don’t we just go with Low-Rent Movers?” she asked her mom. But when she saw the truck, she realized it wasn’t spartan like self-denying; it was Spartan like a citizen of ancient Sparta, with a plumed helmet for a logo.
    The Spartan truck pulled up in front of Kristoff House, and a trio of burly men got out. The Walkers were already there, eager to get their stuff moved in. Brendan was more eager than anyone: He had visions of turning his attic bedroom into a teenage man cave where he could happily ignore the rest of his family. He started trailing one of the movers as the man carried a bag of lacrosse equipment into the house.
    “That goes in my room, the attic,” Brendan said.
    “No problemo,” said the mover, eyeing Kristoff House. It looked the same, except the lawn needed mowing. Brendan’s dad would probably make him do it.
    “Nice place,” the mover said. He was clearly one of those people who liked to talk. “Most folks are downsizing these days. But you guys are moving up.”
    “ Back up,” corrected Brendan as they walked down the path. When Dr. Walker looked over, Brendan gave a big smile, pretending to help the mover with the bag. “We used to live in a place like this.”
    “What happened?”
    “There was an incident,” said Brendan, before realizing he’d said too much.
    “Oh yeah? What kinda incident?” asked the mover. “Your old man was running schemes on the stock market and he got caught?”
    “No.”
    “He did time in the joint for tax fraud?”
    “Oh, no—”
    “Did he wear a scuba suit to check the mail? Was he riding his bicycle naked in circles? What?”
    Brendan stopped short. “Yes. Yes, you totally nailed it. Riding his bike naked in circles.”
    The moving man nodded and frowned as if he knew Brendan didn’t want to hear any more from him. They moved into the kitchen . . . and Brendan’s mind went back to the day that had changed everything.
    Dr. Walker had been a surgeon at John Muir Medical Center. His specialty had been gastric bypass surgery; he’d been headed for a senior position—but then one day he fell asleep in the break room during a shift and woke up standing over a patient, holding a bloody scalpel.
    He had carved a symbol into the man’s stomach.
    It was an eye, with an iris and pupil in the center and half circles above and below.
    Brendan had come home from school and found his mother and sisters in tears. His father couldn’t remember disfiguring the man’s stomach; Dr. Walker had been taking sleeping pills to help him rest, and they had made him sleepwalk.
    The patient had sued, of course. Dr. Walker had lost his job. The lawsuit was still pending, and the Walkers had spent so much money fighting it that they’d been forced to sell their old home and their two cars. It was so weird—so crazy and unlikely—that Brendan still had trouble believing it had really happened, even though he was living with the results.
    “You know, I heard weird stuff about this place,” the mover said as they walked through the upstairs hall, past the portraits of the Kristoff family.
    “What?” Brendan asked.
    “Maybe I’m no Harvard grad, but I’m a real good listener and an even better eavesdropper. And I heard this house was cursed. That’s why the last family left.”
    “You believe in that stuff? Curses?”
    “In San Francisco? With all kinds of hippies and freaks running around? Anybody could get cursed.”
    Brendan had a question, but he wasn’t sure if he could ask it without sounding crazy. He pulled the string so the attic stairs came down and went into the attic with the mover.
    “Where you want the hockey stuff?” the mover asked.
    “Lacrosse,” Brendan said. “Put it anywhere.” The mover put it by the window. Then Brendan said, “If this place is cursed, how do I fix it?”
    The mover didn’t seem