Chapter Three

"Let’s go for a walk," he said to me, at exactly 9 o’clock he was standing out by the lake waiting for me."Where are we going?" I asked curiously, glad we were with each other again.Instead of replying he led me down the dirt road-the opposite of which way I had explored yesterday- and finally brought me to a dead end. He reached for my hand and started running through all the bushes and trees, until we came to an enormous tree with an old tree house built on top. It looked at least 20 years old, it was covered with black, as though it had been burned years before. "What’s up there?" I asked staring at the charred tree house."Come on, I’ll show you." So we climbed up the old and fragile ladder, on one side of the tree house was a small bed with one pillow and one blanket, a small crank television, and a framed picture on top of the t.v. On the other side were what seemed like thousands of books, some open, some with bookmarks, and some looked as if they had never been touched, the air smelled of smoke."How’d you find this place? And so many books?" I couldn’t believe my eyes, only in the public library at home had I seen so many books. "I live here," was all he had to offer."You...live here? By yourself? Your only 15!" "No, I’m not. I was once but that was years and years ago." "What? You can’t be any older then I am! What are you talking about?" I didn’t know if he was just trying to mess with me, but he sounded serious. Maybe he was just crazy or maybe he really was older. But that’s not possible, there’s no such thing as ghosts that’s crazy. "It’s hard to explain-but I can’t tell you here." "What? You’re making no sense!" "Come here," he said grabbing my hand and leading me to the window. We looked down to the ground at an outline of something-I couldn’t tell what- in the leaves."There," he said pointing to the outline, "is where I died in 1942." I woke up in a cold sweat, the details of the dream instantly gone. The rest of the night I was restless and couldn’t sleep.