Wiser women would scream and run. Probably. Rose thought distantly. Fortunately, Rose was fourteen, and wisdom is a symptom that rarely sets in so early.

  So, instead of running, she sat down again on the faded green divan across from Master Dross, arrested by the sight of the unblinking, mismatched eyes across from her.

  “Did you…did you just speak?” Rose squeaked, staring. Staring, staring, staring at Master Dross’s body, which watched her peacefully in return, from his chair.

  Dross took in a breath, as though the motion was more for necessity of speaking than drawing life from the air around him.

  “You’re cold…” Dross said with great difficulty, and then motioned to the fire with his pointer finger, and snapped. “Would you mind?” he said to it.

  The fire roared to life on command. She flinched.

  “So jumpy…” he gave a ghostly chuckle. “Tea?”

  “Tea?” she asked, flabbergasted. “I… you can drink tea? If that’s true then…. Then Master Dross, why is everyone trying to bury you?”

  “Because I am dead,” he said simply. “Ah, and how I long for peace…So. Tea?”

  She almost laughed at the absurdity of it.

  “You’re not, though. Not yet. Right now, you are—Are you alright? Should I—should I go for help?”

  It occurred to Rose that if Master Dross was this coherent, that he should perhaps be in a doctor’s office, or maybe in bed, or…or…well, she didn’t know.

  The master’s lips cracked upwards into a thin, waxy grin, apparently enjoying her deliberation.

  “Playing the heroine for me? Oh, how long has it been…” The ghost of a smile stayed pasted along his stiff lips, but he at least realized that she had not been joking.

  Indeed, any minute, Rose was ready to launch herself from the window and run straight back to her mother’s purse where she could call the police, an ambulance, and whoever else was necessary from her second generation cell.

  “Forgive an old man his rambling. No, no.” Mr. Dross reassured with a practiced wave. “My staff is quite devoted. There’s no need for…calling for more intruders. Again, tea?”

  Rose glanced to the table, where a steaming teapot, kettle, and two pristine little cups had appeared, as innocuous and warm as though they had always been there. On autopilot, she poured two cups for them both—clumsily and with a lot of clanking. But he did not reach for his, and neither did she for hers.

  “Not drinking?” he asked? Still eerily unmoving. His legs had not shifted once, though his blood flow to them must have long stopped, and his movements were heavy, deliberate, and born more of habit than of someone who wanted to move. No, he was stiff and nearly frozen, and he still had not blinked.

  “I’ve never cared for tea,” Rose said honestly.

  “No?” he murmured. “You really are her… a rare trait, that. Did you know?”

  “Not as rare as you might think,” Rose defended, despite herself. “Excuse me. Mr. Dross, but… but you weren’t breathing before. I can call someone for you, I can—”

  “I was not breathing before, young Rose,” Mr. Dross said regally. “And I am not breathing now. Nevertheless, I have accepted your wish.”

  There was a sense of finality in that statement. The air seemed to ring with it, shivering in the force of his words.

  ‘Who are you?’ seemed a useless question, so she settled for something sharper.

  “How are you here?” she asked, gripping the arm of her seat.

  “You made a wish,” said Dross matter-of-factly, and quite animatedly for someone who wasn’t breathing. “In the future, it might be wise not to use the words ‘I wish,’ unless you really intend for the consequences to happen, and even then, it is unwise. If a part of you really means it, other things can take that intent and…use it.”

  “What kind of things?” she breathed.

  His lips shook as he lifted them again.

  “Things far worse than me, my dear.”

  “And you are…” Rose tried, despite herself.

  “The master of this house,” he said firmly. “The master of this house, and nothing more. Not…anymore. But that was not your wish, young Rose.”

  “I wished to know you—”

  “You wished that you could have known me,” he corrected, and if his eyes hadn’t been so dead, she was sure they would have been twinkling.

  “I did,” she confessed, the words sounding incredulous to herself as she added: “You heard me.”

  “Clearly,” he echoed. “However, I believe you are not ready for that wish to be granted. Not ready…. You are young, and I… I….”

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  He trailed off, lost in his own head. When it became clear that he wasn’t planning on saying more, she cleared her throat softly, hoping to bring his attention back to her.

  “Master Dross—”

  The old master actually laughed. No, he cackled. The sound of it was so jarring, she was sure that it would send the maids rushing into the room, but it didn’t. In fact, now that she paid it any note, the entire house, always full of footsteps and laughter, and Mrs. Kettleburn’s shameless flirting with the Reverend, had gone completely still. The clocks did not tick, the boards, always moaning about something in the house, didn’t creak. It was as though the whole world had paused before a breath, to give them this quiet pocket of time.

  “Ah—ah forgive me, Young Rose,” Dross spluttered, when he’d gotten control of his body once more. “When you’ve seen as much of the past as I, irony is everywhere. Ah, I have missed that scowl. Hah!”

  “I see,” said Rose, scowling. “Will you tell me about the things in your study, then? About the things in this room?”

  He gave her an odd sort of look—which really should have been no surprise. All of his looks were odd.

  “I will give you your wish. However, young Rose, simply telling you would not fulfill it, and I fear my time in this form is already gone.”

  Rose found herself swallowing a surprising amount of pity for this strange old decrepit.

  “Cook says they won’t let you be buried in hallowed ground.”

  Dross tsked, elegantly. “Afraid I’ve earned that. Oh, but it would be nice to rest in peace for once.”

  She tilted her head, confused. “Was this house not peaceful?”

  “I haven’t always lived in this house. Quite a recent development, actually. Only these last eighty years. But no, I would not call my time here restful.”

  She blinked. “Why not?”

  The corpse groaned—a forced breathy sound, that was entirely unnecessary except for the drama.

  “Too many wandering souls,” he emphasized. “Even here, I’ve a king’s-load of duties I can’t fulfill. Banished to this little dark corner of my old realm. I fear I am in need of help, Young Rose, and am no longer in a position to ask for it.”

  There was such longing in the old man’s gone gaze, that Rose could hardly stop the words from slipping out.

  “Is there anything that I could do to help you?” she asked carefully.

  The old Master smirked, as though recognizing her caution.

  “So she does learn…” he mused. “No more wishing. Very good. I thank you for your proffered assistance, Young Rose” he said graciously, “however….” and he paused, for what seemed like another very long time.

  “However?” she prompted.

  She didn’t understand this absurd, surreal tea time with the late Master Dross, but though the ticking clock had stopped, she didn’t have to be holding a tea cup to know that it had started to cool, and she didn’t have to be watching closely to know that the fuelless fire in the hearth, had burned down to half its roaring height.

  “Perhaps in my years of living, I have finally learned. What will help me, Young Rose, is a promise, and I do want you to mean it. Just this one. Just once.”

  “Why do you keep calling me ‘Young Rose?’” she interjected, before he could ask his favor.

  He peered at her, his eyelids dropping as he examined her, as though doing so from behind several dirty panes of glass, distant and wandering.

  “Are you not?” he said, more than asked.

  “I—well. Yes,” she admitted uncomfortably.

  “Hm,” he mumbled, once more with great effort.

  Rose shifted in her chair, peering at him long enough to wonder if he had lost his train of thought again, but no. The dead man cleared his stiff, nearly unserviceable throat, and demanded with the authority of a king;

  “A boon, Young Rose. If you could,” he said, labored.

  She nodded.

  “Promise me, Young Rose,” he nearly whispered, “that you will not venture into the house past sunset after I’m gone.”

  “I promise,” she said quickly. It was so simple. So easy to agree, but the look of utter dissatisfaction that slashed across Master Dross’ expression immediately after told her that he staunchly contested that thought.

  “No, Young Rose,” Dross shifted for the first time, and though his legs didn’t move, though it appeared to cost him something dear to do so, he angled his head toward Rose, and bit through the words he spoke. “I am not the man I was in life. I cannot do this unless you mean it with all of the stubbornness of your namesake.”

  “And I won’t,” she said, a little defensively.

  Appearing to deliberate, and then promptly decided that he didn’t have the energy for deliberation, Master Dross gave her a jerky little nod.

  “You never do choose the easy path….Perhaps…perhaps for this, I’ll turn the stars upside-down one last time…”

  Of all the times to trail off. She could have yelled in frustration.

  “I do promise,” she said instead. “I’ll never go into the house after dark.”

  He sighed as though his very ghost was leaving his body, and leaned back into his chair.

  “Not until it’s ready. Then you can…Then off you go to change the world, as the young do,” he breathed, his eyes losing the luster of focus. “I never did say it, Rose…”

  Rose, now? she thought. Not Young Rose? Somehow, she got the feeling that he was speaking to someone else.

  “Master Dross?”

  The tea was no longer steaming, the fire suddenly embers.

  “Master Dross,” she prompted again.

  He spoke again, his voice sounding distant.

  “How odd it is, that I hate the words, still. Though I have died. Though I am gone. Though I may at last find my peace. How I despise that I must say goodbye…Rose.”

  The Master’s eyes closed once again, and this time, they did not reopen.

  Rose looked down, the teapot and cups had vanished. The fire had gone out, but she still had questions for him. He’d said he’d fulfill her wish! She could never get to know him if he was gone!

  What did that mean? What about these windows into other worlds? He was spouting poetry one moment, and back to dead the next?

  Frantically, she shook him. He was stiff and unmoving. No pulse. No breath. Dead for far longer than a few moments.

  “No!” The distinct feeling of loss bloomed like a blood spot in her chest, and she clutched at her heart, willing it to slow down.

  She could still stop this, though. She could still bring him back.

  With that irrational, absurd thought, she seized up the poker, added a log or two to the fireplace, and raked the ashes over… but there was nothing left. In fact, they were stone-cold. As if they’d never burned at all!

  And then, in the futility of the moment, that panging bleeding loss seeped through her chest, and at last, reached her eyes. It was ridiculous. It was unreasonable. Rose sobbed. She shuddered. She cried. She cried for the loss of a man she did not even know.