Wallace hung his head and trudged up the stairs.
* * *
Hugo yawned as he closed the door behind them. He blinked sleepily, rubbing his jaw. Wallace could hear the clock in the front tick, tick, ticking. Before he’d fled the tea shop, the seconds had seemed lost, stuttering and stopping, stuttering and stopping. It sounded as if it’d smoothed out. It was normal again. Wallace didn’t know what that meant.
“It’s late,” Hugo told him. “Our days start early here. Pastries needs to be baked, and tea needs time to steep.”
Wallace felt awkward, unsure. He didn’t know what was supposed to happen next. “Fine. If you could show me to my room, I’ll let you be.”
“Your room?”
Wallace ground his teeth together. “Or give me a blanket and I can sleep on the ground.”
“You don’t need to sleep.”
Wallace flinched. “What?”
Hugo stared at him curiously. “Have you slept since you died?”
Well … no. He hadn’t. But there hadn’t been time. He’d been far too busy trying to make sense of all this drivel. The very idea of sleep hadn’t even crossed his mind, even when things had gotten a bit hazy and he’d found himself at his own funeral. And then Mei had shown up and dragged him to this place. So, no. He hadn’t slept. “I had things to do.”
“Of course you did. Are you tired?”
He wasn’t, which was strange. He should’ve been exhausted. With everything that had happened, he expected to be drained and moving sluggishly. But he wasn’t. He’d never felt more awake. “No,” he muttered. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“You’re dead,” Hugo reminded him. “I think you’ll find sleep is the least of your worries from here on out. In all my years as a ferryman, I’ve never come across a sleeping ghost. That would be something new. You could try, I suppose. Let me know how that works out.”
“So what am I supposed to do?” Wallace demanded. “Stand here and wait for you to wake up?”
“You could,” Hugo said. “But there are more comfortable places for you to wait.”
Wallace scowled at him. “You’re not funny.”
“A little,” Hugo said. “You can do whatever you want, so long as you don’t leave the grounds of the tea shop. I’d rather not have to chase after you again.”
“Whatever I want?”
“Sure.”
For the first time since he’d arrived in the tea shop, Wallace smiled.
* * *
“Mei.”
“G’way.”
“Mei.”
“Time ’zit.”
“Mei. Mei. Mei.”
She sat up in her bed, the blankets falling around her waist. She wore an oversized shirt with the face of Friedrich Nietzsche printed on it. She jerked her head back and forth before settling on Wallace, standing in the corner of her room. “What? What is it? What’s wrong? Are we under attack?”
“No,” Wallace said. “What are you doing?”
She stared at him. “I’m trying to sleep.”
“Oh, really? How’s that working out for you?”
She started to frown. “Not well.”
“Did you know I can’t sleep ever again?”
“Yes,” she said slowly.
He nodded. “Good.” He turned around and walked through the wall out of her room.
* * *
“Oooooh!” he moaned as loudly as he could. “Ooooooooh!” He paced up and down the hall of the bottom floor, a little perturbed that he couldn’t seem to stomp his feet no matter how hard he tried. He banged his hands on the walls, but he kept almost falling through. Which is why he found himself bellowing out every ghost noise he’d ever heard in horror movies. He was disappointed he had no chains to clank. “I’m deaaaad. Deaaaaaaaad! Woe is meeee.”
“Would you shut up!” Mei shouted from her room.
“Make me!” he bellowed back, and then redoubled his efforts.
* * *
Wallace continued on for sixteen more minutes before he took a cane upside the head.
“Ow!” he cried, rubbing the back of his skull. He whirled around to see Nelson standing before him, brow furrowed. “What was that for?”
“Are you going to behave? If not, I can do it again.”
He reached for Nelson’s cane, meaning to take it from him and toss it away, only to come up with nothing, taking a stumbling step forward where Nelson had stood before he’d disappeared into thin air.
Wallace’s eyes bulged as he looked around the empty tea shop wildly. “Um,” he said. “Hello? Where … where did you go?”
“Boo,” a voice whispered in his ear.
Wallace didn’t so much scream as squeak. He almost fell over as he turned around. Nelson stood behind him, arching a bushy white eyebrow. “How did you do that?”
“I’m a ghost,” Nelson said dryly. “I can do almost anything.” He raised the cane as if to strike Wallace again. Wallace reared back. “That’s better. Enough with this nonsense. You may not like being here, but that doesn’t mean you can make the rest of us suffer because of it. Either keep your mouth closed or come with me.”
“Why would I go anywhere with you?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Nelson said. “Maybe because I’m the only other human ghost here besides you? Maybe because I’ve been dead far longer than you have, and therefore know much more than you? Or maybe, just maybe, because I don’t sleep either and it would be nice to have someone to stay up with? Pick one, boy, or don’t pick anything at all, so long as you stop this infernal racket before I show you the end of my cane again.”
“Why would you want to help me?”
Nelson’s eyebrows rose on his forehead. “You think this is about you?” He scoffed. “It’s not. I’m helping my grandson. And don’t you forget it.” He pushed by Wallace and shuffled down the hall toward the front of the house, the little ears on his rabbit slippers flopping around. “About you,” he muttered. “Bah.”
Wallace stared after him. He thought about picking right up where he’d left off, but the threat of the cane wasn’t pleasant. He hurried after the old man.
Nelson went back to his chair in front of the fire, grunting as he sat down. Apollo was lying on his side in front of the fire, chest rising and falling slowly. Someone had cleaned up the glass from the bulb that had shattered earlier, and the lights from the sconces were dimmed.
“Pull up a chair,” Nelson said without looking at him.
Wallace sighed, but did as he was asked.
At least he tried to.
He went to the table closest to him and reached for one of the overturned chairs. He frowned when his hand went through the chair leg. He breathed heavily through his nose as he tried again with the same results. And again. And again. And again.
Wallace heard Nelson laughing, but ignored him. If Nelson could sit in a chair, then it was something Wallace could do too. He just needed to figure out how.
He grew even more frustrated a few moments later when he still couldn’t touch the chair.
“Acceptance.”