The Curse of Redwood (Ivy Grove #2) - Jaclyn Osborn Page 0,51

against the night sky. “Didn’t you say you wanted to scare each other shitless with ghost stories?”

“True,” he said, snorting. “Okay. Well, my uncle was a writer. He published a few books, though many manuscripts sat collecting dust. I guess that’s how I got into reading. When I was old enough, I read his books, even the unpublished ones. But anyway, while alive, he became obsessed with Redwood Manor.” Taylor looked up at the building. “My dad said Uncle Charlie was like a man possessed. He was always chasing that perfect story. And he eventually found it. Or it found him, I guess.”

The blood washed from my face. “Uncle Charlie? As in, Charlie Michaels?”

“Yeah. You’ve heard of him?”

“I found his book in the library. The one he wrote about Redwood.”

“Oh yeah. Dad told me he donated it after Uncle Charlie died. My grandparents wanted everything to do with Redwood gone. When they were cleaning out his house, they wanted to chuck the book and all my uncle’s notes in the trash. They said his obsession with the mansion was what drove him to kill himself.”

“But your dad kept them.”

Taylor nodded. “He donated the book but kept everything else. My grandparents ended up leaving Ivy Grove when I was six, and Dad and I moved into their old house. Dad swears up and down that he saw my uncle in there a few times.”

This is crazy. I had trouble wrapping my head around it.

Z had known Charlie. From what I’d gathered, they’d been intimate too. Charlie was a stranger to me, yet I felt connected to him; both with his curiosity for Redwood and his relationship to the beautiful man who haunted the mansion.

What were the odds that Taylor would be related to him? It all felt intentional, like fate had intervened. Bringing us together. But why?

“What got you into the paranormal?” Taylor asked. “You said you like to research haunted places and stuff, but what got you started with it? Seeing that one ghost with your buddies when you were playing with the Ouija board? What was her name again?”

“Sarah,” I answered, and a shudder passed through me at the memory. A cold breeze tickled my cheeks, and I snuggled deeper into my hoodie. “She wasn’t my first encounter with the paranormal.”

Taylor looked over at me, waiting.

“I was five the first time I ever saw a ghost,” I continued. “My mom’s an actress in California and used to drag me with her on set when she couldn’t find someone to drop me off on. ‘Sit here and don’t say a word,’ was what she’d always say before being whisked away into hair and makeup. So, I’d draw my knees up and sit in the corner, watching as people laid cables and carried equipment back and forth. Some wore headsets and they’d give or receive orders. Everything moved so fast. But that was showbiz. If you stayed still too long, someone would surpass you. It was a nonstop rush to the top.”

“Wow, I didn’t know that about your mom,” Taylor said. “What happened after that?”

My eyes glazed over as I remembered…

“That your momma?” a boy asked, sitting beside me. He stared at the set in front of us of an apartment living room where my mom was speaking with her costar, her makeup freshly done. “She’s pretty.”

The boy looked to be the same age as me, if not a year or so older. He wore shorts that cut off just above his knee, and his short-sleeved shirt buttoned in the front. His skin was abnormally pale and shimmered under the lights.

“My momma was pretty too,” he said, finally turning his face toward me. Half of it was burned to a crisp, the skin having been melted off. His teeth were exposed on that side. “Then she did this to me.”

“That gave me chills,” Taylor said, after I told him.

“I saw him a few more times after that,” I said. “He’d always be looking at me from several feet away, standing much too still. People on set would walk right past him, oblivious to him being there. When I got older, I researched the building and learned that before it’d been a studio, it had been an apartment. A woman had set fire to her room, locking her six-year-old son and herself inside it. They’d both died in the fire.”

“That’s when your fascination with morbid shit began?”

“Yep. I bet you think I’m a freak, huh?”

“No.” Taylor shoulder-bumped me and studied the dark