Page 46 of Love at First Fright

I didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer.

Because she was right about that too.

Molly was one of the few ghosts here I considered a close friend. Not just an ally in the eternal war against the living, but someone who’d listened when I occasionally ranted. Sometimes about being dead in general. Sometimes about being stuck at Grimthorne, with its forty-some residents there was no escaping. Commiserations about dreams that died before they’d had a chance to live. I’d even spoken to her a little about my parents.

“He played your guitar,” Molly said softly. “In the attic. I heard it. The one you sometimes hold but never play.”

I nodded, letting my gaze drift in the attic’s direction. Through all the floors and walls between us, I could still picture Charlie’s fingers on those strings.

“He was pretty good, wasn’t he?”

“Not a touch on you, Master Bartholomew.” Molly’s tone carried that particular motherly warmth I often craved. “Will you play us a tune on the piano one day soon? You haven’t done that in quite some time.”

The question hit harder than she knew. Yet I forced myself to nod.

Playing music—making music—it did something to me that nothing else in death could touch. When my fingers found the keys of the manor’s grand piano, when I coaxed sound from strings and wood, the world narrowed to just that. Pure creation. Pure expression. The same rush I’d felt on stage with the Bats, with our amps cranked high enough to rattle teeth and our lyrics screaming defiance at a world that wanted us silent and compliant.

For those moments, I felt alive.

And then the song would end.

And the silence would crash down like a wave, drowning me in the reminder that I’d never write another track. Never record another album. Never tour beyond these walls. The dreams I’d had—the music I’d wanted to share with the world—had died with me. Twenty‑three years old and already finished.

The joy and the grief came as a package deal. Couldn’t have one without the other.

But Charlie had made it sound different. Fresh. Like hearing a song for the first time, even when you knew every note by heart.

Nothing lasts forever, that’s what they all say.

The line hit me like a punch to the gut. Always did.

It had been the opening of what I’d been convinced would be our breakthrough track. The song that would get us noticed. Get us signed. Get us out of dingy pubs and into proper venues with actual sound systems and crowds who came to hear us, not just whatever band happened to be playing while they got pissed.

I’d written it a couple of days before I died. Scribbled the lyrics on the back of a takeaway receipt at half-past two in the morning, melody burning so bright in my head I couldn’t sleep until I’d got it down. Jeremy had been round the next day, drumming out rhythms on his knees while I played the chord progression. Ollie had already started working out a bass line that would’ve made people move.

Nothing lasts forever, that’s what they all say.

But I could only remember that one bloody line. The rest of it—gone. Wiped clean like someone had taken a cloth to my memory. Twenty-seven years of being dead, and that fragment still circled my brain like a vulture. Taunting me with what I’d lost. What we’d all lost.

The song that might have changed everything.

An almighty bang echoed from somewhere. Then another. And another, in rapid succession.

Molly and I exchanged glances.

“The kitchen,” she said.

We glided through the walls—no need for doors when you were incorporeal. The scene that greeted us was pure comedy.

Brad’s face was twisted into an intense scowl. He stood in the centre of the kitchen, clutching his ridiculous SpecterTrack Monitor thingy. The device beeped frantically, lights flashing across its surface like a disco ball having a seizure.

Behind him, a cupboard door swung open with enough force to bang against the wall.

Brad whirled, the monitor thrust forward like some kind of sword.

The cupboard slammed shut.

Another cupboard—this one to his left—flew open. Packets of pasta tumbled out, scattering across the counter.