Everybody dies, don't they?

Isn't that same?

You tried to get into the locked drawer today, didn't you?

How do that they'd come back, mother?

What's the secret?

The Red Room by H.G. Wells.

I can assure you, said I, that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me,

and I stood up before the fire with my glass in my hand.

It is your own choosing, said the man with a withered arm, and glanced at me askance.

Eight and twenty years, said I, I have lived, and never a ghost have I seen as yet.

The old woman sat staring hard into the fire, her pale eyes wide open.

Ah, she broke in, and eight and twenty years you have

lived and never seen the likes of this house, I reckon. There's a many things to see when one's

still, but eight and twenty. She swayed her head slowly from side to side, her many things to see,

and sorrow for. I half suspected the old people were

trying to enhance the spiritual terrors of their house by their droning insistence. I put down my

empty glass on the table and looked about the room and caught a glimpse of myself, abbreviated and

broadened to an impossible sturdiness in the queer old

mirror at the end of the room.

Well, I said, if I see anything tonight, I shall be so much the wiser, for I come to the

business with an open mind.

It's your own choosing, said the man with the withered arm once more.

...