After Life

Number eighty-two High Gate Road was a house of extraordinary beauty. But to Mollie Parker, it was a prison she could never leave. The largest house on the street, a Georgian mansion with whitewashed walls and towering columns, gleamed like a relic from another world. Once, white roses split from the gardens and the air carried their sweet scent. Now, the petals were brittle and the wind through the oak tree whispered a chill that had nothing to do with weather.

Mollie longed to sit in the front garden, to hear birds singing or laughter echoing from the house. She could see the world outside, but it belonged to the living, and she... did not.

Almost a year ago, life had thrived here. Now the lawns were overgrown, the gates rusted, and the roses faded to ghostly shadows of their former glory. Inside, the family clung to memories, struggling under the weight of grief. How could they laugh when Mollie’s laugh no longer filled the halls? How could they live in a house that had already claimed its own?

People gossiped about the house. The unease that lingered in its corridors, about the cold that settled into the walls, and if the rumours were true the girl who never left. Number eighty-two High Gate Road was beautiful, yes. But it was cursed. And Mollie was trapped in its perfect, terrible heart.

***

A deep amber glow flickered from a distant streetlight as the winter sun struggled to rise. From her bedroom on the first floor, Mollie watched the postman. He carried a bundle of letters in his hands, and a heavy red bag crossed over his left shoulder. Mollie watched him shiver in the frosty morning air and began to wonder why, even in the cold, he still wore thin grey shorts. She could see his lips muttering the address under his breath, as a cloud escaped. He looked frozen, with cheeks brushed by a hint of blue.

She had lost count of the number of days or was it weeks she’d been there for, but she recalled every step, every sound. His hand brushed against the iron gate, and when he pushed it open, its ancient metal cried out, and she flinched as if it had startled her.

He moved forward, trying not to linger on the stories of the house. Each footfall crunched the frozen ground, each breath misted in the chilly morning air. She followed his eyes, saw them flick to the upstairs window where a curtain twitched ever so slightly. A thrill of recognition, maybe envy. Ran through her chest.

Visitors could see the house, but they could never see her.

Mollie watched him. She felt the tension radiating from his stiff shoulders. She knew the house had this effect on people—on the living—but she had been here long enough to see it all without the luxury of stepping away.

The Postman’s knock echoed against the walls. Mollie stepped through her bedroom door and carefully moved down the stairs. She hovered in the hallway and watched as her mum approached. Grace Parker’s footsteps echoed through the silence, and the sound quickened as she headed towards the front door. Mollie’s eyes narrowed as for the first time in a long time she got a good view of her mum.

Her hair was messy, stubborn, and strangely familiar. It made Mollie pause, a gasp stuck in her throat. Her chest tightened at the sight, a strange pang of recognition flickering across her senses.

Mum?

She remembered mornings like this, the sunlight glinting through the curtains, the scent of breakfast in the air, and someone else standing at the door, handing over letters... none of it real anymore.

The door opened just a fraction, and Mollie saw the Postman’s hands tremble slightly as he held the letters and parcel. He didn’t know she was watching him. He never would.

Mollie wanted to reach out, to say something, anything, but she couldn’t. She floated silently in the corner of the room, unseen, feeling the cold bite of the house wrap around her like a shroud. Her prison, her domain, her curse. She could watch them, follow their rhythms, but she could never touch the life that once belonged to her.

Grace smiled faintly at him, oblivious to the shadow that hovered just behind her gaze. Mollie felt a hollow ache in her chest, a memory of laughter she could no longer share. And still, she watched. Always watching.

His pace quickened up the path, and he saw the front door ahead of him.

***

Mollie hovered just out of reach, watching her mother close the heavy wooden door. Letters. Cards. Condolences. Too many reminders of what had happened, of what she had lost. Grace moved through the hall past photographs of happier times. Smiling faces frozen in frames, echoes of laughter Mollie could no longer hear. Some photos Mollie could not bear to leave untouched, not even in memory. Mum, Dad, Evan, Eve, a happy family of five now four people, like strangers scattered across the country.

Her mother went straight to the fridge, and Mollie followed her gaze, noting the large bottle of red wine waiting in the cold. She watched as Grace unscrewed it, inhaling its sharp scent—the same ritual of drowning, the same attempt to blur the edges of unbearable thoughts.

But not today. Mollie could feel it in her mother’s hesitation, the slight pause in her movements. Not today.

Grace carried the empty bottle through the kitchen and out the back door. The morning chill brushed her arms, and Mollie shivered at the memory of that same cold brushing her skin, the last warmth she had felt clinging to her hand as life slipped away. She watched her mother lift the lid of the bin, and the bottle slipped, crashing down with a sharp, hollow sound. It landed among the other bottles, a pile of regrets and unspoken sorrow.

Grace lingered over the lid, fingers resting for a moment as if the weight of everything—the house, the loss, the silence—could somehow be contained. Mollie wanted to reach out, to whisper that it couldn’t. That nothing could ever contain it. But she remained unseen, trapped behind the veil, forced to watch the living live while she remained forever caught in the space between.

Mollie hovered just behind her, invisible, untouchable. Alone with her thoughts as she battled through her feelings of watching her mum suffer with the day-to-day struggle with life after death.

Grace Parker’s shoulders slumped, breath came fast and uneven. Another night, another bottle might have followed. Another night, she might have tried to drown the world—or herself—until the edges of life blurred and she hovered between life or death itself. Nights bled into days which shifted into weeks, she’d been like that since the night it happened and now the vibrant young woman was the shadow of her former self.

But not this morning.

Not today.

Today she was up and dressed at a decent time of the morning, and as sober as a nun and dry as a bone. She needed a shower and to brush her hair but today she looked almost normal.

Mollie’s heart broke for her. She reached out instinctively. Her fingers passed right through Grace’s coat, right through her arm. She tried to catch a flicker of warmth, a heartbeat, anything. Nothing.

“I’m here,” Mollie whispered, more to herself than anyone else. The words fell silent.

Grace let the lid of the bin slip from her grasp allowing the sound to wake up the morning. Mollie tucked a stray strand of strawberry blonde hair back behind her ears as she watched Grace heading back inside the house, locking the back door behind her.

Mollie took a deep breath and stepped through the locked door into the warmth of home. She was greeted by the usual sound of silence, a tired tone of nothingness. No laughter bouncing from the walls from her siblings enjoying the joys of their childhood. Just silence. No TV blaring from the lounge as her dad watched the sport with his friends. Even her mum was silently embedded in her grief. Although Grace put her makeup on and styled her hair into a neat bun, the scent of grief still hung in the air.

Mollie watched as Grace gathered her handbag and briefly checked her reflection in the mirror that hung on the wall in the hallway. Her makeup was decent, especially the waterproof mascara that made her look like any other mum trying to hold herself together. A beautiful bouquet of golden yellow sunflowers sat in a vase on the side. They were wrapped in pretty gold cellophane with a glittery ribbon.

Mollie thought for a moment and let out a lengthy sigh, a tear of remembrance twinkling in her eye. It was that time of year again, and how quickly time passed. Last year was full of presents wrapped in the most sparkly wrapping paper, and enough cards from friends and family to fill a sizable shoe box. With a sorrowful heart, she waited and watched in silence as Grace gathered the bouquet, left the house, and listened to the key turn in the lock.

Sadness clawed at Mollie’s heart. It messed with her mind and twisted deeper and deeper inside her thoughts. The first year was always the hardest. She turned towards the staircase and headed up the steps. Memories of her life before death swallowed her every thought. Standing outside her bedroom door, she reached for the handle out of habit, but her arm slipped straight through the wood and vanished.

She sighed. Walking through doors and walls was one more thing she still hadn’t learned to feel comfortable with. She stepped through it, her weightless body drifting forward before she could brace herself. Mollie’s room was exactly as it had been before everything changed. Its door was locked to preserve the past. The pastel covers on her bed were strewn all over the place, and pillows almost hung from the sides. Makeup was littered across her dressing table, and lipstick lay on the floor. She walked with silence across her room, her bare feet sunk into the softness of the deep-piled cream carpet.

Lying on her unmade bed, Mollie let the tears flow. As the pain and suffering that she’d kept hidden finally began to flow from her eyes. It ran down her cheeks and onto the pillow under her face.

Why me? Why did it have to be me?

Her sobs echoed through the ancient walls of the old Georgian house. She thought of her best friend, Eli, and recalled his voice and the smell of his aftershave, as she wondered how he was after everything. Was he coping with losing his friend? Or was he like Grace, struggling with every aspect of life, alone and afraid? Mollie couldn’t bear thinking about it. She just hoped more than anything that he was alright. She missed his laugh and his mucky sense of humour—everything had been an innuendo with him. But after losing her, she wondered if he’d changed.

Her thoughts drifted to her family. Before everything happened, she hadn’t just had a mum—she’d had a dad, and Evan and Eve too. She knew her younger siblings were with Nanny Sue now, miles away from the county, far from the sorrow that lingered in this house. But Dad... Dad hadn’t been seen since the beginning of the year. No one knew where he was. Not even the police, and they’d searched. They all had.

The clock on the wall ticked loudly, each beat breaking through the silence. Its hands jerked forward with an unnerving, restless life. On the opposite wall, the family portrait gave a tiny twitch, tilting as though something unseen had brushed past. The air inside the old house thinned into a freezing, biting cold.

Mollie jolted awake. A deep crack split open in the centre of the room, glowing with a pale blue light that pulsed like a heartbeat. She pushed herself up, hands trembling. Then, from within the crevice, a hand slowly slipped out.

She thought she was dreaming, but this was no dream. A nightmare from the pits of Hell. Something horrible and terrifying. She could feel her heartbeat racing rapidly, so much so that she began to feel sick.

"Mollie Rose Parker?” The voice echoed from deep inside the crack in the atmosphere. It appeared female and spoke in a quiet whispered tone.

Mollie’s eyes widened, her dead heart fluttered again. Its pace was rapid as if it were still alive. A figure slipped from the opening. Before she knew it an elderly lady stood in front of her.

A cold shiver ran down her spine.