Tethered to the Other Side

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I was standing at the end of the hallway, just outside the bedroom where she died, holding the locket she gave me, as tightly as I could, hoping it might tether her soul long enough for one last goodbye. She would’ve turned twenty-one next month; I had just turned twenty-two. I stood there, paralyzed, as the candlelight flickered unnaturally in the corner of the room. I didn’t know how to explain the cold that rolled through the hallway or the way the air thickened like fog. Forty-eight hours ago, we had danced in the field behind my house beneath a moon so full it lit her eyes like stars. Now, those eyes stared from photographs, still warm with memory. The priest had just finished the rites, but the house hadn’t let her go. Not completely. It had only been ten days since she whispered to me that the shadows were watching. Ten days from butterflies in her stomach to frost in her veins. When the clock in the hall stopped ticking, it marked not just the end of her life—but the beginning of something neither of us could name. This was the breach, the splinter between worlds, when love refused to leave even as death came knocking.

My mind scrambled to keep pace with the horror unraveling before me, but my heart had already crossed over. I held the locket like a lifeline, not just for her—but for me. I could feel the pull, like gravity distorted. I could feel her still here. Not alive, not gone. Something in between. It was a trapdoor in time, and I had fallen through it. The silence was unnatural, broken only by the sound of the wind clawing at the windows and the faint, rhythmic creak of the floorboards above—where no one had walked since the funeral. My breath came in gasps, shallow and cracked. I wasn’t alone in the room, though no one stood beside me. Her presence clung to the air like perfume and sorrow.

The nights that followed were maddening. There’s no gentler way to describe it. Each dusk brought with it whispers behind closed doors, mirrors fogging without touch, and lights that blinked in rhythm with my heartbeat. I sat in the parlor, staring at the fire that wouldn’t catch, holding her scarf, soaked in rain and perfume and something else. I feared the thing I had wished for—that she might still be here. Because what remained wasn’t fully her. It was grief and longing and something darker, feeding on both.

I hadn’t known Annalise for long—barely nine months—but she had etched herself into my very bones. And I into hers. Our love had grown fast, wild, defiant, and beautiful, until it turned. The days after her death stretched like shadows at dusk. I wandered through the house, hearing music that had no source, hearing her laugh echo in rooms we never entered. Grief weighed on me like wet wool, and her absence bent time, twisted it, until I could no longer tell dream from memory, haunting from hope.

Desperation led me to the ritual. I found it in her grandmother’s journal, tucked in a drawer beneath old letters. I wasn’t ready for what I read, but I did it anyway. I traced symbols in salt and whispered her name like a prayer, or a curse. I didn’t know if it would work. I only knew I needed something—anything—to see her again, to find the thread between this world and whatever thin veil she stood behind.

The ritual didn’t feel holy. It felt like screaming into the abyss. My mind became a carousel of grief and flickering candlelight. I chanted her name, called her spirit, begged the house to answer me. Sometimes, I felt her hand brush my face in the dark. Sometimes, I heard her breathing beside me as I wept. Trying to reach her was like trying to catch fog with bare hands.

I did it every night for weeks—until I didn’t.

And then, one night, the veil lifted. Not with thunder. With silence. I woke up to her standing at the foot of my bed, her eyes the same and not the same. She smiled, but there was no warmth behind it. That night, the candle never went out.

If her death was the breaking of the world, her return was the rewriting of its rules. She wasn’t tethered by time or blood or breath anymore. And neither was I. I didn’t understand what I had become—only that the bond had changed. She was still mine, but now our love lived in the quiet hours when the world held its breath. I knew then: the house had never haunted us. It had *welcomed* us. We were its children now.

That was the night I made a promise: I would never let her go again. October 31, 2022. The night the veil lifted. I would meet her where she was, no matter the cost. I would walk beside her in the dark, whether she wept or laughed or whispered things that turned the blood cold in my veins.

At first, our reunions were brief—flickers in candlelight, reflections where no mirror hung. But I started to see her more clearly. Sometimes, I felt her hand in mine. Other times, I saw her dancing at the edge of the woods, pale feet not touching the ground. The moments grew longer, the space between them shorter. My breathing slowed when she appeared. She became my rhythm. My heartbeat.

Other nights, we sat by the river—the one that flooded the year she died. The water never flowed quite right again. We watched it together, silent, listening to its endless murmuring. The river became our confessional. Her voice in the current, mine in the wind. Breathe in – Breathe out. Love is like that river—sometimes calm, sometimes violent, but always carrying something with it. And now, it carried us.

As the terror softened into a familiar ache, I understood: what we had wasn’t just love. It was obsession, devotion, resurrection. It wasn’t meant for this world. It never had been. Our story lived in twilight, between heartbeat and silence, between memory and myth.

I saw our future not in years but in eternities. I pictured us wandering through forgotten halls, dancing in fields no one visits, whispering in the dreams of lovers who dare to love too deeply. I didn’t know what came next—only that we would move through it together.

The house has changed. We’ve claimed it. The rooms breathe with us now. We speak through creaks and candleflame, through rustling curtains and the sudden cold touch on the back of a neck. This place carries our story. It is our sanctuary. Our haven. Our crypt.

Grief is still with me. It always will be. But now it is shaped like her hands, her laugh, her echo in the walls. I’ve carried many kinds of loss in my life—family, friends, versions of myself—but none etched itself into me like she did.

But I know now: I am no longer afraid of what lies on the other side. Love carried me into the dark. And she met me there.

If I could whisper one thing to the boy I was, it would be this: Light the candle. Open the door. She’s waiting for you.

Love doesn’t die. Not always. Sometimes it waits. And sometimes it comes back.

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