When Death Isn't the End

MANNY

CHAPTER 16

The house felt off the moment I stepped in.

Too quiet. Too still. Like it was holding its breath.

I slipped off my sandals and called out, “Mummy?”

No answer. Not even the usual rustle from the kitchen or the muffled hum of the TV she sometimes left on for background noise.

I dropped my bag by the couch and made my way down the hall. The corridor lights were off, but I didn’t bother switching them on. I knew this house with my eyes closed.

Except tonight, it didn’t feel like mine.

The door to her office was cracked open.

I hesitated. My chest tightened.

Then I pushed it.

Everything inside was a mess. Not the usual kind of clutter my mother lived in—this was different. Desperate, chaotic. Papers everywhere. Her laptop screen still glowing, the fan making that low buzzing sound it made when she left it running too long.

I stepped in.

Her office always smelled like eucalyptus oil and biro ink, but tonight there was something else—something burnt. Maybe fried nerves. Maybe fear.

I moved toward the desk, eyes scanning the piles. Her red jotter was open, pages marked up with frantic handwriting I didn’t recognize. I picked up a stray sheet and glanced at it. Coordinates. Names. Strings of questions that made no sense.

Then I saw the wall.

It stopped me cold.

A corkboard, right above her bookshelf, covered in printouts, notes, photos—stuck with thumbtacks and masking tape in a way that felt almost paranoid.

It looked like something out of a film. A detective show. One of those American crime dramas she never watched.

But this wasn’t fiction.

I stepped closer, heart pounding.

Red threads connected some of the photos. Faces, places, documents. I didn’t recognize most of them.

Then I saw him.

Top right corner.

A grainy photo. Nighttime. Campus parking lot.

The guy from the bathroom.

The one I let kiss me until my lipstick smudged onto his jaw. The one whose name I never caught. The one I f****d, quietly, in that cracked toilet stall behind the Student Union bar weeks ago, trying to forget myself.

My breath caught.

The label beneath the photo was short, typed in bold:

EMMANUEL “MANNY” OKORO. DECEASED. 19/04.

I blinked hard. Read it again.

Deceased.

My eyes dropped to the date. 19th April.

My hands started to shake.

That was the night.

That exact night.

I pressed my fingers to my temples, trying to remember. The music had been loud. I remember that. My head had been swimming. We'd barely spoken—just kissed, urgently, like we were trying to outrun something. He had kind eyes. I remember that too.

But what happened after?

I searched my memory like digging through wet sand. Nothing held. It slipped through. I couldn’t even picture how we’d said goodbye. Did we? Did he just vanish?

I stepped back from the board, breathing hard, my palms damp.

What was his face doing on my mother’s wall?

I sat there for a long time, staring at the wall like it might blink back.

I tried to calm myself. Counted the red threads on the board. Six. I traced one with my eyes—from Manny’s photo, all the way to a scanned page with police markings and faded biro notes in the margins. Most of it was unreadable. But one thing stood out, circled over and over again like someone had lost their mind trying to make it make sense:

“The girl was last seen entering Block C toilets. No exit recorded.”

Block C.

My throat dried.

I knew that place.

It was the same night. The same toilet.

Me.

That line was about me.

I stood up too fast, knocking a pile of folders to the floor. One burst open, scattering documents across the rug. I dropped to my knees, heart thudding, and started scooping the pages back, trying to be careful, but my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

That was when I saw another photo—half-tucked into a manila envelope. I pulled it out.

It was a CCTV freeze-frame.

Me.

Walking down the corridor of the Student Union building. Looking straight at the camera.

Alone.

No sign of him.

But I remembered us leaving together. I remembered his hand on my lower back, guiding me out. I remembered—

Or did I?

I blinked hard, willing the image in my mind to sharpen. It refused. Like a video stuck buffering forever.

I looked back at the photo. My face in it was… wrong. Not afraid. Not wild. Just blank. Eyes glazed, mouth slightly open.

Empty.

And beneath it, another timestamp.

19/04, 10:14 p.m.

A full hour after we’d hooked up.

And I was alone.

I dropped the photo like it burned me.

Something twisted in my gut. A cold kind of panic. I reached for my phone. Dead. Of course. I dug through my pockets for the power bank I’d borrowed from Kene, but it wasn’t there.

I needed air.

I bolted out of the office and down the corridor, past the sitting room, straight to the front door.

Outside, the evening air was hot and thick with the smell of charcoal and fried oil. The generator next door coughed like an old smoker. I sat on the front step and held my head in my hands.

I wanted to throw up.

What was my mother doing with that board? Why was she tracking people from my school? Why was he on there?

And more than that—why couldn’t I remember anything clearly?

Had he really died that night?

And if so… was I the last person to see him alive?

A car passed slowly in front of the house. I didn’t look up. My skin was buzzing with too many questions. I wanted to call Beverly. Or Kene. Or anyone, really.

But who would believe me?

I didn’t even believe myself.

The longer I sat out there, the more it felt like the world was tipping sideways.

And then I heard it.

The creak of the gate.

I turned sharply.

Nothing.

The street was empty. A dog barked somewhere far off. A man was yelling at someone over a phone from two compounds away.

But the gate had moved. I was sure of it.

I stood up, heart in my throat, and walked to the gate. The metal was warm under my hand. I peered through the slats.

No one.

I stood there for a while. Waiting.

Then I heard a noise behind me.

A single, sharp clink, like something falling inside the house.

I turned and ran back in.

Through the hallway. Past the kitchen.

Straight to the office.

Everything was how I left it—papers scattered, the board still standing.

Except…

The photo of me?

Gone.

My hands went cold.

I looked everywhere. Under the desk. Behind the chair. Under the scattered folders.

Nothing.

Just a red thumbtack on the floor, still spinning.

Who had been here?

How had they gotten in?

I backed out of the office slowly and locked the door behind me. My breath felt tight in my lungs.

I didn’t sleep that night. I curled up on the couch in the parlour, all the lights on, a kitchen knife under my pillow.

I tried to tell myself I was overreacting.

That none of this meant anything.

That the photo was probably misplaced. That maybe my mother had good reason for what I saw. That I didn’t really know that boy. That a random hookup dying the same night we—

No.

No amount of lying to myself could explain the way my name was scribbled on one of those files.

Jasmine Craslow – POSSIBLE LINK?

My mother had written that.

In red ink.

As if I was a person of interest in her private investigation.

Or worse.

A suspect.

Why was he dead?

And why couldn’t I remember anything that mattered?

My chest felt tight. I sat down slowly on the edge of her chair, afraid my legs would give out.

The fan above kept spinning. Pointless, barely stirring the air.

Something was wrong.

With this room. With my memory. With me.

And somewhere, under it all, a voice I didn’t recognize whispered:

You shouldn’t have come home.

I didn’t know when I finally drifted off. But it couldn’t have been more than an hour or two, because when I opened my eyes again, the sky was still bruised with early morning grey. The generator had stopped. The silence was heavy, like the air was holding its breath.

I sat up slowly, muscles stiff, knife still clutched in my hand.

My neck ached. My mouth was dry. My head throbbed from all the things I wasn’t saying out loud.

I had to do something.

I tiptoed back to the office.

Still locked.

I unlocked it with shaking fingers and opened the door just a crack.

The board was still there. The photos. The threads. The folders on the ground.

But not the photo of me.

That one was still gone.

I picked up the folder it had been in. It was thin—only a few sheets inside. A copy of my student ID. A list of numbers, possibly my course registration details. A blurred photo of my hostel block. My name was written on the tab in my mother’s tidy handwriting.

This wasn’t just random curiosity.

She was watching me.

Documenting me.

But why?

I felt like a glass cup someone had filled too fast—thoughts and fears sloshing everywhere. I needed to see her. To look in her eyes and ask her what the hell she thought she was doing.

I went to her room. Still empty.

Her bed was untouched. Her dressing table covered in makeup she rarely used. A framed photo of us both—me in my secondary school graduation gown, her standing stiffly beside me, hand on my shoulder like she wasn’t sure she was allowed to be proud.

Where the hell was she?

I called her phone again. Switched off.

I tried her office line. No answer.

I threw on a hoodie and jeans, slipped my phone into my pocket, and left the house. It was too early for keke drivers, so I walked, feet crunching against the dust of the roadside. Hawkers were setting up their stalls, calling greetings I barely heard. The sun was starting to creep over the horizon, but the cold from the night hadn’t fully left yet. My breath fogged in the air.

I got to the Ministry building by 7:40 a.m.

Her car wasn’t in the lot.

I waited.

For hours.

Security kept looking at me like I was lost. I probably looked it.

By noon, I was still sitting under the frangipani tree beside the entrance when my phone finally buzzed.

A text.

Mum: Come home now.

That was it.

No explanation.

No “where are you?” or “are you okay?”

Just: Come home now.

I ran all the way back.

She was waiting in the sitting room when I got there, arms folded, still in her black office skirt and pale pink blouse, a tired look in her eyes.

“You went into my office,” she said.

I didn’t deny it. “Why is my picture on your board?”

Her jaw tightened. “Because I’m trying to protect you.”

“From what?”

She didn’t answer.

“Mum, that boy—Manny—the one I… the one who died—why was he on your board? Why do you have CCTV pictures of me? What’s going on?”

Her eyes flicked to the hallway. She stood up and walked past me. “Come.”

I followed her back into the office.

She sat behind the desk like it was a shield.