Redbeard

The narrator relocates with his family to a suburban town and notices a class of homeowners whose roots run deep in the community and who seldom interact with newcomers. He befriends one such long-time resident, Howie, and the pair take a meandering drive.

Howie cruises past a tumbledown house and identifies it as Redbeard’s.  The narrator supposes the dilapidated property haunted, and Howie agrees, citing several abortive attempts to visit. 

The narrator asks about Redbeard and his fallen home. Howie recounts that the house was occupied by a man named Jackson and his young wife, Sarah.  One night, Jackson encountered an accident along the roadway involving a school bus. A policeman asked Jackson to ferry injured children to the hospital but was refused.  Suspicious, the officer searched Jackson’s car and found the body of a girl beneath a tarp in the backseat.

Jackson was arrested and imprisoned.  Executing a search warrant on the Jackson home, the county sheriff encountered a locked door in the cellar.  Sarah explained that the room was Jackson’s private quarters and that she never had access to it.  The sheriff and his deputies forced their way inside and found the corpses of three women, long dead.

The local newspapers dubbed Jackson “Redbeard,” owing to the fiery color of his hair, and named his house “Redbeard’s Castle.”