Page 55 of The Curse of Redwood

“Dude!” Taylor leapt to his feet and charged forward a handful of steps. “Did you see that?”

“See what?” I stood and joined him in front of the gazebo.

He clicked the flashlight icon on his phone and shone the light around us, searching the shadows. “I thought I saw someone. Looked like a little kid. He was standing righthere.”

Oh, William.I inwardly laughed.Please don’t give Taylor a heart attack.

“I heard a lot of children died here. Maybe you saw one of them.”

“Nothing is scarier than a ghost kid,” Taylor said with a shudder. “Just the thought creeps me out.”

As if on cue, a giggle came from our left.

Taylor grabbed my arm with one hand, while holding his phone out in front of him with the other. He gasped when a dark shape dashed across the yard and stopped fifteen or so feet from us. William was mostly transparent, though he could still be seen. Taylor gaped at him, rooted in place.

“Come play with me!” William said, before disappearing into the house.

Instead of running away like most other people would, Taylor ran to the back patio and peered through the glass doors like I used to do.

I stood beside him. “Probably not a good idea.”

“Why not?” he asked. “The little boy is in here. He passed through the door like it wasn’t even there.”

A pale face slammed against the glass, sending Taylor backward as he screamed. Finally having had enough, Taylor clutched the sleeve of my hoodie and dragged me away from the door.

Before I went too far, though, I saw Z standing on the other side of the door with a smug smile on his handsome face. He then put his hand to the glass, his eyes pinned to me. My heart ached. I wanted to go to him, but that would involve alotof explaining since Taylor was with me. So, I smiled back at him before being pulled from his sight.

Once we were back in Taylor’s car, he started the engine and released a nervous laugh. “What the hell? That was insane. You saw that face too, right? And the ghost boy? I’m not going crazy?”

“No, I saw it.”

“The stories are true,” he said in an incredulous tone. He put the car into drive, but chose to look at the mansion through the bars of the fence instead of taking off right away. “Redwood really is haunted.”

Taylor was quiet as he drove me home. For years, he’d been interested in the paranormal world, but that night was the first time he’d ever actually seen a ghost. I thought back to when I’d first seen Sarah. I hadn’t slept through the whole night for about a week afterward. The boy at my mom’s work was the first ghost I’d seen, but being so young, it hadn’t really registered with me until I was older.

“You going to be okay?” I asked, as we passed Ben’s house. I could faintly see his manor from the road.

“I don’t know,” Taylor answered with a shake in his voice. He pulled into my driveway, putting the car in park. “Still trying to process it.”

He was in no shape to be left alone. Poor guy was pale and trembling.

“Wanna come inside for a bit?” I nodded to my house. “We can have a beer and talk it out.”

“Sure,” he said, sounding relieved. “Thanks.”

After going inside, I grabbed us each a beer and sat with him on the couch.

“What do you know about Redwood?” he asked. “I’ve heard stories about it and read through my uncle’s notes, but I was always afraid to delve too deep into the mansion, you know? I didn’t want to end up like him.” He popped open the can and took a long drink before staring at the carpet. “But now I wanna know about the place, so maybe I can understand his fascination with it.”

I looked at my drink. “We’ll probably need something stronger than beer if we’re gonna talk about this.”

An hour and a half later, I finished telling him all I knew about Redwood—about the people who’d died there and the grisly details surrounding their deaths. We’d downed a 12-pack of beer and had broken into the vodka stashed in the freezer by that point.

“There’s something I still don’t understand,” Taylor said, slurring his words a little.

“What’s that?”

He set his near-empty glass of vodka and sprite on the coffee table and reclined back on the couch. “In one of my uncle’s notebooks, he wrote about a man at Redwood with blond hair. He never gave a name or too many details, but it sounded like he was in love with the guy.”