Page 68 of The Curse of Redwood

Thunder boomed outside as my feet carried me down the long corridor. The panic had made me forget my way around the mansion. Was it that corner I needed to turn down or was it the hall farther down? Goddammit, I couldn’t remember.

“In here,” a whispery voice said from the other side of a closed door. The same door Zeke had told me to never open again. The woman in the wardrobe. “I’ll play with you.”

I ran faster, snapping my head from side to side as I searched for the exit. Surely, Jasper wouldn’t chase me all the way outside. I just needed to reach the back door, and then I’d flee the backyard. I’d be safe once I reached the perimeter of the property.

The tricky part was escaping the house first.

“My wife, Nellie, ran too,” Jasper shouted from behind me. “Poor little thing kicked off her shoes and ran barefoot on this cold floor. She looked absolutely ravishing in her dress. What a shame to stain it with her blood.”

I dashed around a corner and came to a dead end

“No!” I exclaimed, slapping at the wall before whirling around in a panic. I rushed forward to go back the way I’d come, but then jolted to a stop when Jasper walked around the corner, spinning the axe.

“Oh my.” He clicked his tongue. “You see, I was going to tell you this hall led to nowhere, but that would’ve ruined the joy of seeing that look on your face.”

There were two doors on each side of the hall. I didn’t know where they went, but anything was better than standing there and letting myself be killed by a mad man with an axe. I dove toward the door to my left, relieved to find it unlocked. I flung it open and slammed it behind me before turning the lock.

Jasper was a ghost and could pass through the door if he really wanted to. But I doubt he could bring the axe with him if he did.

“Run all you wish,” Jasper said, as a scraping sound came from the other side of the door. “It makes the chase so fun, dear boy. Most fun I’ve had in nearly a hundred years.”

Quickly, I observed the room.Please be another exit somewhere.It looked like some sort of study, not the same one Zeke had shown me before. Gray light came through the small window as rain hit the glass, and the walls shook with a large rumble of thunder. A bookshelf protruded from one wall, and there was a small fireplace on the other.

“Carter,” a voice said from the direction of the bookshelf.

“William?” I asked, stepping toward it. “Where are you?”

Wait. Zeke had said the mansion had hidden passageways. His father had constructed them to fight his boredom. Could the bookshelf be the entrance to one of them?

Jasper slammed against the door and laughed. He’d be inside in a minute, maybe less.

I started pulling books on the shelf, trying to trigger the mechanism to open the secret passage. None of them were working.

“Dammit!” I yanked at the ones on the next shelf.

“The statue,” William said from the other side of the wall.

I searched for the statue before spotting it on the shelf above me. It was of a Roman soldier. I tapped at the head and pressed all around it to no avail. On a whim, I then touched the back of the shield he carried. There was aclickbefore the bookshelf shook and unlatched itself from the wall. With no hesitation, I opened it wider so I could step through, and then I closed it behind me.

William sat on the floor, playing with a wooden toy horse. “You’ll be safe now, sir.”

I looked around. There were no windows. The only light came from two burning candles. A hallway stretched behind William, and the air was musty.

“Won’t he be able to get in here?”

The boy shook his head. “He’ll forget about you soon. Darkness has hold of him now, but it’ll pass.”

“Where does that hallway lead?”

William disappeared from the floor and materialized under the archway to the hall, the toy still in his hand. “To the painting in the music room.”

I started walking down the corridor before turning back to him. “You aren’t coming with me?”

“I don’t go in the music room.”

“Why?”

“That’s where the lady is.”