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As Edwin saw it, the old manor had an air not unlike his grandfather: stuffy and pompous to keep up appearances, but with a secretive adventurous side that said, here you go now, don't tell.
The secret passageways and false walls were only the first of the secrets. Edwin spent the first few weeks doing nothing but exploring the crevices, climbing the dumbwaiters and hunting for buried treasure. He didn't find any.
When he met the cobwebbed boy, Edwin thought he was a ghost.
It didn't alarm him, seeing a ghost. Ghosts were peculiar shadowy things, and not nearly as frightening as the things he dreamt up, anyway. But the cobwebbed boy was not a ghost. He was, as he told Edwin solemnly, deep within the false wall on the fourth floor, a witch's grandson.
He had been there as long as the ages, as long as the house itself. Ever since his wicked grandmother had slipped him a note, which he'd read the first time in the flickering candlelight of a hundred years ago: You won't grow up.
He'd shown Edwin the note, yellowed and crisped with age, but still legible in all its witch's ink and purpose. Still potent.
And the cobwebbed boy's face had turned ashen gray and lined, but still round and childlike and so, so sad. Edwin stayed with him sometimes, and they would play checkers, the cobwebbed boy's body too arthritic for wrestling. And sometimes the air would crackle and whisper, and the cobwebbed boy would go very still. When that happened Edwin would hold on to him tightly, shutting his eyes and pretending he didn't hear the echo of the old woman's whisper: You won't grow up. You won't grow up.
