Title: Glass Roses
Author: Shades of Hades
Date: January, 2007
A/N: This is the re-written chapter to go with the changes I made to the storie in chapter five (okay, so really I just fixed up bits of the old chapter because I'm lazy).

Chapter Three: Close Encounters

Practically tearing my self up, I awoke, my heart pounding violently against my ribcage as if trying to break out of its prison. My vision slowly came into focus as I caught my breath.
“Fuck.” I muttered, rubbing my fingers against my naked chest as if trying to calm my heart. “It was just a dream.”
After much coaxing, my heart settles itself back in my ribcage, and I lay back in my bed, not sure if I could really sleep again after having such a disturbing dream.
“It’s just this creepy old house…” I tell myself, trying to get my brain to go back to the depths sleep. “Once I get use to it, everything will be fine.”
I yawned and felt my eyelids getting heavy. I let them close, enjoy the silence of my room and feeling at peace again.
The peace didn't last long however. As I loamed at the edge of sleep, I was pulled back violently with a loud crash.
My mind was in overdrive, my eyes wide in panic and my mouth opened, not sure if I should scream or not. I closed my mouth as I looked around my room, knowing full well that screaming would wake up my mother, which I had no intention in doing. No matter how scared I was, there was no way I would admit so to her.
Clutching my sheets I stared out into the blackness of the room, my eyes trying hard to adjust to the dim light my windows let it.
There's a faint shimmering in the inky blackness and despite my instincts, I opt for calling out softly, “Who’s there?”
My whole body's tight with tension and it took all my self-control not to hide under my blankets like a five year old and hope ‘the scary monster’ would go away, or at least not kill me. I had never had a bugler in my house before, and I wasn't sure how to deal with it. I suddenly felt much younger than I was, and I felt ashamed at myself, like hiding under the blankets was going to help against a person.
“I’m sorry,” was the answer I got from the darkness. The voice was eerie and cold, much how my room felt at the moment as all the hair on my body stood on end. It's chilled me to the very bone and no amount of self-control and reason could stop me as I hid under the blankets again, eyes wide.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you…” The voice was sad and soft, slightly higher pitched then my own, but obviously a male's.
Pulling the blankets from my eyes, I look into the darkroom, wondering if I really should scream and wake up mother. It could have easily been a murderer or a rapist of some kind, trying to calm me down so he could get close to me.
A face appears from the darkness and I'm shaking, reality of the situation sinking in. There was someone in my room with me, and there was no where for me to go. Even if I ran, I couldn't make it to town or even another house before this man did something to me.
Goosebumps rose on my skin as he drew closer to me.
“Who are you?” I couldn’t stop my voice from shaking. It’s not everyday you wake up from a nightmare to find someone in your room with you. “What do you want from me? I'm warning you, don't come any closer.” I lifted the sheet over my eyes again. “I'll scream.” My mother would probably ignore the scream, like the few times that I had woken up from a particularly painful nightmare and found my throat raw from calling out in my sleep. He didn't know that though, therefore the threat stood well.

“My name…” He began, only to stop.
I pulled the sheet from my eyes and off my face, wondering if I was getting somewhere with this person.
His face was still deeply shadowed, and I realized as I looked closer at him, that his skin was translucent. What the hell? I thought to myself as I stared, realizing I could make out what was behind him in the dim light.
“My name... is Gabriel Bancroft…” he finishes and moves towards me again.
My fear was beginning to disappear as I stared at him and my iron gripped that I had held onto my blanket with died, and it fell, pooling in my lap.
“I do not want anything from you,” he told me just as quietly as when he had begun speaking. “I-- I was just curious as to who you were.”
He steps into the moonlight and my heart stops dead in my chest. Moonlight streams through his body. He is about my age with a pretty face and wide blue eyes. His blond hair is push back out of his face, a few rebellious hairs falling forward despite the attempt to move them, and his clothes are an old style that I only remember seeing in Thanksgiving reenactments. He was an unusual sight to say the least.
A ghost, I tell myself. He's not real. My eyes squeeze shut, and I repeat it over and over.
He's not real. He's not real.
But he IS real. When I open my eyes, he's still standing in the same spot, eyes staring blankly out my window.
“M-- my name,” I stuttered out, not believing what is happening, “My name is Jackson.”
Ghosts AREN'T real, I told myself sternly, but he didn't disappear. Instead his cold gaze drifted to me, eyes questioning me.
“My mother and I just moved in,” I explained, feeling cold as if my blood has just been drained from my body with his stare.
“Your mother...?” He asks quietly, staring at me.
“Yes,” I tell him, rubbing my arms, trying to restart my blood circulation.
He standing at the edge of my bed now, eyes staring at me intensely, as if trying to figure me out.
“No one has lived here for years,” he tells me as he sits on the edge of my bed. I scrabble to move my feet away from him as they instantly go cold.
“I know, the place was really dusty.”
He smiles softly at that, eyes staring into the darkness of the room.
“It's been even longer since anyone lived here that could see me.” His smile fades and tears balance at the edge of his eyes. He blinks them back and looks at me. “Why don't you run away like they do?”
I am surprised by the question, and think about it a moment before I answer him. “I know I don't have to fear you.”
He smiles at this, tears once again in his eyes, but I get the impression that they will never be shed. Deep sadness lays in that smile, and I find myself wondering why.
I move in closer to him, feeling hypnotized by those sad blue eyes that sparkle as he stares at me.
“I've been so alone,” he tells me, eyes never leaving mine.
“Me too,” I say softly, not realizing I had said it a moment.
“No one's ever really talk to me since...” He rips his gaze from mine, and I feel a certain sadness at the motion. “Since I died,” he finishes and his voice seems to fade back into the darkness he came from.
“I'll talk to you,” my words are spoken quietly, almost like I’ll break some sort of spell if I speak too loudly.
He looks at me again and smiles wider than before. “You will?”
“Of course.”
“You won't leave me, like everyone else... will you?”
I wanted to ask him what he meant by that, who everyone else was, but I couldn't bring myself to ask what would be a surely painful question.
“I promise I won't leave unless you want me to,” I told him boldly, wondering if I could really hold true to my promise considering the likelihood of me moving in just a month or so.
He smiled again, and climbed to his knees.
“Thank you,” he says as his arms wrap around me. I shiver violently and resist the urge to push him away as my body goes deathly cold at his ghostly touch.
Instead I fall back against my pillows, his light body resting on mine.
I smile into the air as I wonder at the scene in front of me.
“I've never had a friend before,” I tell him quietly.
He gives no response for a moment and we just lay there, silence resting heavily around us.
“Neither have I,” he says, before we both lapse back into a more comfortable silence.
He lifts his head as stares at me, pushing himself up, his arms on either side of me so he can see me clearer.
I blush at the intimacy of our position.
He smiles. “Sleep well,” he says quietly, fingers ghosting over my face.
I smile back as my eyes close.
“Sweet dreams,” I tell him before I fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.