Beyond (Afterlife book 1)

beyond

by
Willow Rose

Copyright
Willow Rose
2011

Published
by Jan Sigetty Boje

Publishing at
Smashwords

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or
distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission
from the author.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to
actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. The Author
holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is
prohibited.

Cover design by Jan Sigetty
Boje

Special thanks to Linda Harris
of Perfect Word Editing Services:
www.PerfectWordEditing.com
.

Romance Fatal Serif Font by
Juan Casco
www.juancasco.net

For more info about the
author
:

http://www.willow-rose.blogspot.com/

www.facebook.com/willowredrose

https://twitter.com/madamwillowrose

To Anne Christina

Chapter 1

How do I say this? Well, the thing is … I am
a spirit. Before you close this book because you don’t believe in a
life after death, just take a deep breath and listen to my story.
It might be interesting to you. You might want to know that death
is only the beginning of the next great adventure. I know I would
have liked to have known that when I was still alive.

Maybe you do believe that there is an
afterlife, maybe you have even seen us, or at least seen what we
can do. Either way I am sure you will enjoy my story.

Before I begin we need to get the facts
straight. In the world of the supernatural we make distinctions
between spirits. Some are like me—Ru’ach, as we are called here,
which is Hebrew meaning “the wind of man” or “the spirit of man.”
As a Ru’ach I am a part of the Spiritual Realm, which is just as
real as the Natural Realm. Those who are still human in flesh and
blood just can’t see it. I can go wherever I want, do what I want,
and even talk to whomever I want, including humans.

Then
there are the Se’irims, which means
“hairy beings.” You can call them demons if you prefer. They are
the evil spirits that ascend from Hell and walk the earth just like
us, but they make bad things happen to people, and make them feel
guilty and depressed.

How did I get to be a spirit? Well I really
don’t know. I guess I died in some sort of way.

By the way, my name is Meghan and I am
sixteen years old, or at least I was when I died.

As I just said, I don’t know how I died,
just that I did. I woke up on a steamboat. That is my earliest
memory of anything. It is not that we forget everything when we
die; we remember a lot of different stuff from when we used to be
alive, but we don’t remember the people we used to love or who used
to love us. Also specific things and details about our life go away
as well. But that is only to protect us, they say, so we won’t miss
our family too much. It is just in the beginning. They want us to
focus on our new life, not the old one. Eventually when we finish
our education and training at the Academy, they open our file and
we get the memory back and, best of all, we get to visit the people
we love and protect them.

Before you start wondering, yes, we do
look just like humans. Actually we are just as we were before we
died. I have been told that the spirit leaves the body exactly two
seconds before the physical body dies. So we have the faces we used
to have and we do wear clothes, the same ones we had on the day we
died. If you were to see us, you would actually have to get really
close to see that we are not humans. But when you do you will
realize that we have no body of flesh and bones and blood veins. We
are nearly weightless, we weigh only 21 grams, which is kind of
cool and very fun. We are not pearly white as you would think; we
have all of our color on our clothes, on our skin, and in our eyes.
It’s hard to explain exactly how we look because we do have hands
and feet and stuff, but it’s just not like humans have it. We are
made of a soft fluid-like material.

Anyway, back to my story. You can probably
imagine the surprise I got when I opened my eyes and found myself
standing by the railing with several people next to me whom I had
never seen before. And boy, what a shock I got when I looked down
and saw that the moving steamboat, with a big paddle wheel on its
back, was in fact flying through thin air. Underneath us there
wasn’t any water, only mountaintops. I have always been afraid of
heights, so I tried to grab on to the person standing next to me.
But that was before I knew anything about who I was—or rather had
become.

The person next to me was an adult and a
spirit as well, so I just went right through her body with a
plunging sound, like we were both made of water. We both fell to
the wooden deck. She wore a pointy hat and a long black coat. Her
face seemed stiff, maybe because of the fall. While lying on the
floor, she spoke to me first.

“
For crying out loud, get
out of me,” she said.

I realized what had happened. I had jumped
inside of her, so to speak. Our skin and bodies could bend and move
like they were made of some fluid.

And that leads us to another of your many
questions. Yes, Ru’achs can feel something. I can feel it when
people touch me most times—and I definitely felt it when I jumped
inside that lady. It didn’t hurt, though. It just felt strange and
weird and a little clammy.

T
he woman next to me told me to calm down
when we got back on our feet. I was naturally frozen with
fear.

“
Who are you?” I
asked.

The woman chuckled.

“
Now where are my
manners?” she said and reached out her hand.

I took it in order to shake it, not
knowing what else to do, but my hand just went straight through
hers making that plunging sound again. She looked at me and then at
her hand.

“
Well, yes, you will need to
work on that,” she said and pulled back her hand. She talked with a
high-pitched, annoyingly old-fashioned voice.

“
I haven’t introduced
myself. My name is Penelope Higgins. That is Mrs. Higgins to you. I
am a teacher at the Academy of the Spiritual Realm.”

Imagine my surprise.

“
The what?”

“
Academy of the Spiritual
Realm,” she repeated, as if it were the most natural thing in the
world, which is of course it wasn’t. It was supernatural like the
rest.

“
Oh yes that’s right, you
don’t know anything yet. You just got on the boat.”

“
Why am I on a
boat?”

She leaned toward me and whispered. “You are
dead.”

“
I am what?”

“
I am sorry to be the one to
tell you, but you are dead. Now you are a Ru’ach, or a spirit if
you prefer the more earthly term for it. You are going off to the
Academy where all spirits go when they have just left the world of
the living and entered our world. This is where we teach you how to
live your new life.”

“
What? I … I mean … how
…?” I asked very confused and slightly panicking.

“
Well, you did come a little
unexpectedly,” she said and looked at me as if the cat had brought
me in. Then she smiled a kind of weird and scary smile.

“
We will make room for you
at the Academy, I am sure. They will know you are on your
way.”

“
How did I even get
here?”

“
How does anyone get
anywhere these days?” She chuckled. Then she stared at me. “I guess
you died,” she said.

I shook my head not believing a word of what
she was telling me. How could this be?

“
But … what about my
parents? Where are my parents? They will be worried if they don’t
know where I am.”

At least that was what I thought, because
in the same second I realized that I didn’t even remember my
parents. All I remembered was that I had a mom and a dad and that
they usually worried about me.

Mrs. Higgins sighed and shook her head.

“
They will not be worrying
about you, trust me.” Then she stared at me in an observing way.
“Do you mean to say that you actually still remember your
parents?”

I thought hard about them but couldn’t
recall a face or a picture or anything. But I knew in my heart that
they were there.

“
Well, not really. I can’t
picture their faces or anything, but I kind of remember … I don’t
know what it is. It is like a feeling or something …”

Mrs. Higgins snorted.

“
That is highly unusual,”
she said. “Well maybe it will wear off eventually.”

I looked at the kids standing next to me,
looking down at the landscape floating by underneath us. One was a
chubby little boy; next to him was a just-as-chubby girl looking
almost exactly like him. I guessed they were brother and sister, as
I later found out to be the truth. Not only that, they were twins.
They had red blood stains on their clothes and glass splinters in
their faces. When they realized I was staring at them, they both
stuck their tongues out.

“
This is Frederic and
Alexandra Cornwell,” Mrs. Higgins said. “They will be in the same
class as you. They got on the boat a few hours ago.” Then she
turned toward me and whispered. “Car accident, they told
me.”

My eyes widened. Then I looked down at
myself. I was wearing ordinary clothes: jeans, a top, and a small
jacket. I had dressed nicely the day I died, I was happy to see.
And I had no blood on me. I felt my head and there were no bruises
or glass or anything that indicated it had been a violent
death.

“
At least they know how they
died,” I mumbled and dared to stare down for a short second.
Mountaintops and valleys with rivers, forests with pine trees and
small lakes floated past beneath me. Then we came to a stop. It was
like a dock, but placed between two clouds. Here more people got on
the boat. Kids were hanging out by the railing and talking, while
others were hanging their heads out the windows from the restaurant
inside.

Then there was a loud sound, as the big
paddle wheel started turning again and steam from the engine
drifted over the heads of the people standing on the top deck.

Soon the boat was off again. Everything
seemed so blurry and strange. I was leaning on a red railing and if
I reached out and touched it my hand went right through. But I
still managed to lean on it without falling through. I didn’t
understand how that was possible. But again none of it seemed to be
possible.

The guy standing next to the fat twins
leaned over and said, “It’s the only thing they
remember.”

I looked at him. He seemed to be about my
age. He was tall, kind of cute-looking with his blue eyes and blond
hair. His clothes seemed very old-fashioned. He wore nice grey
pants and a white shirt with a silk vest and some sort of black
wide tie underneath his jacket. He was very elegant but looked like
he had stepped right out of an old movie. A movie about rich
people, that is. He wore gloves and held a black hat between his
hands.

“
Hi, I am Mick,” he said
and shook my hand. This time I managed to grab on to it for a few
seconds. It felt funny because our hands went right through but I
still felt his handshake. It was a tickling feeling.

“
Hi, Mick. I am Meghan … at
least I used to be.”

“
It is scary the first
time, right?” He asked and looked down. We had passed the mountains
now and the boat was flying over the ocean.

I just nodded.

“
What did you mean by ‘It is the
only thing they remember’?”

“
Well, most people don’t
remember anything when they have just died. But some have such a
traumatic death that they will remember just that moment when they
died, such as a car accident or a plane crash.”