The Long Curls of the Drowned Boy

I never believed in ghosts, not really. Not until we moved into my brother’s house. Three months ago, my boyfriend Alex and I sold our cramped city apartment and moved into the sprawling, old house my brother Marcus had bought a year ago. It was the kind of house that had character, with creaky floorboards and drafty windows, but we loved it. Marcus was a quiet man, a bit of a loner, who spent most of his time either in his study or out in the overgrown garden. The first few months were peaceful. We’d have dinner together, laugh about old times, and then retire to our rooms. I thought, finally, a stable life.

But last night, everything changed. At 3 a.m., Alex shook me awake, his eyes wide and frantic in the dark. ‘Did you hear that?’ he whispered, his voice trembling. ‘Loud banging and voices, like arguing.’ I blinked, groggy. ‘No, I didn’t hear anything,’ I said. He insisted it was loud, so he got up to investigate, pulling on his bathrobe and padding barefoot down the old stairs.

I stayed in bed, but sleep wouldn’t come. After an hour, I heard him coming back up. He looked pale. ‘You won’t believe what happened,’ he said. ‘When I came down, the living room was dark, but the TV turned itself on. So I sat down on the sofa to watch, and it turned off, then on, then off again, like it was toying with me. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something in the doorway. A boy’s head and shoulders, just peeking around the frame. He looked like he was ten or twelve, with wild, curly hair. I stared at him, and he pulled back. Then a few minutes later, he peeked again, and when I looked at him, he withdrew.’ I felt a chill run down my spine. ‘Maybe it was just your imagination,’ I said, but I didn’t believe it.

The next morning, over toast and coffee, Alex told Marcus about the incident. I expected Marcus to laugh it off, but instead, he set down his mug very carefully. ‘Was the boy’s hair big and curly?’ he asked, his voice low. Alex and I exchanged a glance. ‘Yes,’ Alex said. ‘Like a lion’s mane.’ Marcus nodded slowly, his face unreadable. ‘That started not long after I moved in. The boy you saw… he’s been here for a while.’

Marcus went on to tell us that a few months after he moved in, he started hearing things too. A boy’s laughter in the hallway at night, the patter of bare feet, and once, he saw the same curly-haired boy standing at the end of the hall, just watching. But when he investigated, the boy would vanish. He never told us because he thought we’d think he was crazy. But now that we both saw him, he believed it was real. He suggested we check the house’s history. We went to the town records office. The house was built in 1890, and the original owner, a wealthy merchant, had a son named Thomas. Thomas drowned in the pond behind the house in 1899, at the age of eleven. His middle name was Curly, because of his unusually curly hair. According to an old diary we uncovered, Thomas was a mischievous boy who loved to play pranks. He would hide in the house and peek around corners to scare people. The diary said that after his death, servants reported seeing a boy with curly hair peeking around doorways, and sometimes the TV or lights would flicker—well, not TV back then, but candles and lamps.

Now, Alex and I are terrified. The banging he heard, the TV, the boy—it all fits. But Marcus seems almost calm. He says he’s gotten used to it, that Thomas is just a lonely spirit looking for playmates. But I can’t shake the feeling that something darker lurks. Last night, after Marcus told us, Alex and I lay in bed, talking. ‘What if it’s not just a prankster?’ I whispered. ‘What if the boy wants more?’ Alex pulled me closer. ‘We should leave,’ he said. But as we spoke, we heard a faint knock on the bedroom door. Not loud, just a tap. Then another. And another. The pattern was like a child’s game: knock-knock, pause, knock. I looked at the door, and through the crack at the bottom, I saw a shadow—a head with curly hair peeking around the doorframe. I screamed.

We ran to Marcus’s room, but he wasn’t there. His bed was empty, and the window was open. On the floor, there was a message scrawled in what looked like soot: ‘Come play.’ Alex and I bolted downstairs, out the front door, and into the cold, misty night. We ran to a neighbor’s house and called the police, but when they arrived, Marcus was back in his room, asleep. He claims he was in bed all night. But he has the same curly hair as the boy in the old photograph—the boy who drowned over a hundred years ago. The police dismissed it as a prank, but we know better. We’re leaving this house tomorrow, but deep down, I know Thomas won’t let us leave easily. He’s been waiting for playmates for over a century, and now that he has us, he won’t let go without a game.