LITMIR.BIZ

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      This was happening. We couldn’t be figments or shadows or fades. We were real, and when he brought my face closer to his—that was real. And the fluttering in my stomach—that was real too. I felt true things. Everything was real except his breathing, which I couldn’t hear; a pulse in his wrist, which I would never find; a heart, which could never beat for anyone.

      “Your bruise,” I said. The mark was already starting to fade. “What happened?”

      “That must be nice.” A man stood at the top of the driveway, the man in black with his hands in his pockets and sticking-up black hair. “Ghostie love,” Mr. Black said.

      I pulled away from Tom. “I’m not a ghost.”

      “Isn’t it convenient, Tom, that a girl your age should die, just—what? A hundred or so years after your interment? Lucky you. You hardly waited at all.”

       A hundred years?

      “Esmé Wong,” Tom said. “Mr. Dylan Black. He’s a decent friend, when he isn’t tanked up.”

      Mr. Black made a little flourish with his hand, and attempted a bow, nearly tripping. He smelled—like earth, as Tom and Clara and Martha did—and like something else too, something strong, medicinal.

      Alcohol. Mr. Black was drunk.

      But that wasn’t what worried me. “How old are you?” I asked Tom.

      “Don’t scare her off now,” Mr. Black interrupted.

      “When did you die?”

      “Always an awkward question,” Mr. Black said.

      “Tom,” I said.

      He glanced at Mr. Black. “Isn’t there a hay loft that needs haunting?”

      Mr. Black shuffled away, muttering. Tom waited until he had gone. When he turned back to me, his eyes were flashing. How could they do that? How could they change depth, and sparkle, and lighten and darken? How could he be so changeable? He was dead.

      “When?” I asked. “When did you die?”

      “Ez,” Tom said.

      “If you won’t tell me how, at least tell me when. At least tell me how old you are.”

      Tom said, not looking at me, “I died in 1903. I was seventeen.”

      “You’ve been seventeen for over a hundred years?”

      “It’s not that bad. It goes by quickly. You find things to do.”

      “What? I scared the mail carrier today. That took two minutes. What else have you been doing?”

      “Trying to find a reason.”

      “A reason for what?” I said. Then I knew. His bruise was gone, had completely disappeared in the time we had been arguing, had healed itself—and his eyes had dulled too, hardening to a cold steel color. “Why are you haunting here?” I asked. “Is that it? Why are you a ghost, and not buried somewhere?”

      “I am buried somewhere. Clara and I are next to each other. But no, I don’t know why I’m a ghost. I don’t know why I’m still here. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. None of us do. I’ve been trying to figure that out for over a hundred years.”

      “Who hit you?” I asked, staring at his eye, where the bruise had been. The skin there looked normal now. How could it heal so fast? How could the dead heal?

      “Come with me,” Tom said.

      Beyond the pond, hills rose above the cow pasture. On top of the first hill grew a few bent trees. The hill had a large amount of jagged stones, the overgrown grass brushing up to my knees.

      “What are we looking at?” I asked.

      “Look down.”

      “So?” I said. “Rocks. No one mows here.”

      “Look closer.”

      I humored him, bending down to brush the weeds away from one of the stones. There were letters engraved on its surface. I shot up.

      “It’s not mine!” Tom said quickly. “It’s the family plot.”

      “Could use a bit of tending,” a mournful voice said and I looked behind me to see Mr. Black perched on a tilting gravestone, swinging his legs. “Your grandmother has almost forgotten the plot is here,” he said. “Perhaps she doesn’t want to remember. Upkeep really isn’t her specialty, anyway, is it?”

      “Aren’t you supposed to be in the hayloft?” I asked.

      He held up a flat green bottle, which sloshed when he shook it. “I had some hidden about here.”

      “Wait,” I said. “I thought ghosts couldn’t drink or eat?”

      “We can,” Tom said. “It just doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t taste like anything. It doesn’t make us feel full or less thirsty or satisfied. We’re never satisfied.”

      “And yet,” Mr. Black said, swigging from the bottle, “we do what we know, what’s familiar to us, what feels comforting. What we were doing when … well, you know.”

      “You were drunk when you died?”

      “I was,” Mr. Black said.

      “So you’re drunk forever. You’re drunk as a ghost.” I wrinkled my nose. “That’s disgusting.”

      Mr. Black lifted the bottle and drank.

      “His grave is over there,” Tom said, pointing.

      “You were family?”

      “No,” Mr. Black said. “But the family was a kind one, and arranged for some of their favorite servants to be buried here. I was the gardener.”

      “Martha’s buried here, too,” Tom said. “Beneath this tree.”

      I found her small stone, the letters caked with black moss. “Martha Mary Moore,” I read. “Devoted and Faithful. November 14, 1881—January 1, 1900. She was just nineteen. And she died on New Year’s Day.”

      “New Year’s Eve, actually,” Mr. Black corrected. “But they didn’t find her until the next morning.”

      “How do you know?”

      “Why do you think I started drinking?” He took another sip, grimacing at the harsh taste. He got no pleasure from it, I saw. He drank like it was medicine.

      I walked in a circle around the graveyard. It was like wading through deep water, the grass was so thick. “Who are all these people?” I said. “The others buried here? Why haven’t I met them? Why aren’t they ghosts? Why isn’t the house full of ghosts?”

      “I don’t know,” Tom said. “It’s just me and Clara and Mr. Black.”

      “And Martha,” Mr. Black said.

      “And the Builder,” Tom said.

      “And—”

      Tom looked at him sharply, and he drank.

      “Why haven’t I met the Builder?” I asked. “Where is he?”

      “Building, I imagine,” Mr. Black said. “Putting in some cupola, or a stairway that leads to nowhere.”

      “He keeps busy,” Tom said. “He does what he knows. He built this house. And he keeps on building it.”

      I gazed down at the house at the bottom of the field: the stained-glass fanlight above the doors, the boxy addition on the back. The house had been added onto over the years, and some pieces matched more than others. “Where are you buried?” I asked Tom.

      He opened his mouth to speak, but his words were

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