Beyond (Afterlife book 1) (3 page)

“
The great thing is you
will never have to worry about calories again,” I heard a woman
about forty say to two other women.

And then they laughed. It was the first
time I heard anyone among us newcomers laugh. It made me smile as
well. Rahmiel smiled at me, causing me to feel an extreme inner
peace. How she did that I didn’t understand at all. But she was
like everyone’s mother, always smiling, making us feel loved and at
peace.

Then the dessert came: ice cream and
brownies as big as books.

While eating dessert, I suddenly saw Mick.
He shook hands with some friends, chatted for awhile with some
others before he came toward our table. I smiled and felt a little
twitter in my heart. I hoped he had come to talk with me. But he
went straight to Rahmiel and kissed the back of her hand while
bowing in front of her.

“
My lady,” he
said.

“
My dear Mick,” she
replied with a warm smile.

“
Do you find everything to your
satisfaction?” he asked.

“
As always.”

Then I was happy to see that he turned to me
and came closer. He whispered in my ear.“So you like the food?”

I nodded excitedly. “It’s the best I’ve
ever tasted,” I said with my mouth full.

“
That’s what I thought,”
he said with a little smile.

“
Did you make
this?”

He nodded. “I did.”

“
Wow, you are good. How did you
know what I like?”

“
Call it intuition,” he
said and winked at me.

What’s all that about? Why does
everybody keep winking at me?
I thought to myself. Did they have some kind of
secret they thought I knew about? I didn’t understand that at
all.

Soon the twins who sat next to me began to
fight. Mrs. Higgins had said their names were Frederic and
Alexandra Cornwell. They had been gulping down food for almost an
hour straight now and still they kept eating. I realized the plates
were designed to never be emptied. But even though the two had all
they could possibly eat, they still both wanted the same doughnut
that at some point had fallen off one of their plates. And now they
eagerly debated to whom it belonged.

“
It was mine,” Frederic
said while picking up the doughnut with his fat little
fingers.

Alexandra stabbed her fork in his hand
thinking it would hurt him. But as it went straight through him, it
only made him laugh in her face.

”
Ha!” he said.

The fork trick had probably worked while
they were growing up, but now everything was different. Frederic
opened his mouth and ate the doughnut while Alexandra
argued.

“
It was mine, you
know!”

“
Now it is mine,” Frederic
said with his mouth filled, deliberately showing his sister the
half-chewed doughnut in his mouth.

“
I hate you!” Alexandra
screamed. She threw her fork on her plate and crossed her arms in
front of her.

To my surprise, Mick suddenly intervened.
He stuck his head down between the two and tried to calm
them.

“
I think I might be able
to fix your little problem,” he said.

They both looked at him, obviously not
believing him.

“
See, I am the cook in
this fine establishment.”

Alexandra looked at him with a little more
interest.

Then he stretched out his arms
and flipped his hands. When he turned them, a doughnut even bigger
than the first one emerged between his hands. Frederic’s eyes were
huge with envy as Alexandra smiled and took it, looking back at her
brother
triumphantly.

Mick looked at me and smiled. I clapped my
hands discreetly at him. Then as I turned my head, my eyes stopped
at Abhik who sat across from me. He sat with his head bowed and had
barely touched his food. I stared at him until I heard Mick whisper
from behind me. “It is not polite to stare.”

I moved my head. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean
to,” I whispered. “It is just that all the rest of us are eating
like we never had food before and that boy is only sticking his
fork into it but not even putting it in his mouth.”

“
Abhik has been a cancer patient
most of his life. He is not used to having an appetite or eating
that much. But he will be. We need to give him some time to get
accustomed to the fact that he can actually eat and that he will
never have to feel sick again. These things take time.”

Just as Mick finished his words Salathiel
raised his glass high in the air and made a toast.

“
To our new students,” he
said.

“
To our new students,” the
entire hall replied.

After dinner we followed Salathiel and
Rahmiel out of the big hall. They soared into the air and we
followed them climbing a long ladder.

I was surprised to be feeling so sleepy. I
didn’t even know if spirits slept. But then again I didn’t think
they ate, and I had been proved wrong.

We found our beds in one of the towers.
Four other girls shared my room: Portia, who was also an American
girl like me; Acacia from Greece; Mai from China; and Jackline from
Uganda. The old-fashioned beds surrounded with velvet curtains were
so soft, unlike any bed I had ever slept on. Being as tired as I
was, I didn’t pay any attention to the girls chattering. I fell
into a deep sleep almost immediately.

I had an odd dream that night. Some people
who I thought were my parents were searching everywhere for me. I
couldn’t see their faces but knew it must have been them. They were
desperate and worried. I wanted to tell them that I was all right,
they shouldn’t be worried about me anymore, and that I was dead,
but it wasn’t so bad. But I couldn’t.

I woke up sweating and shaking. Once I
realized it had just been a dream I rolled over and fell asleep
again, but the next day I couldn’t stop thinking about the dream.
What if it was true? What if my parents didn’t know what had
happened to me?

Chapter
4

I was late for my first class. The story
of my life, I thought, and apparently also of my death. I woke up
late and the other girls were already gone. I climbed down the
ladder and then had no idea where to go from there. The hallways
were quiet and there was no one to ask for directions. So I tried
to walk the same hallway I thought I remembered we took the night
before, but I was wrong. I ended up in a dead end with a door on
the right.

I entered it and stood in a
huge chamber. In the middle
on a giant table of stone sat a huge open book. I
went to it and looked at the pages filled with pictures of humans.
The first one showed an elderly woman lying on her deathbed. The
more I stared at the picture, the more I realized that she was in
fact moving, exhaling what seemed to be her last breath. The
woman’s chest was elevated while the spirit quietly oozed out of
her body and looked down at her. Suddenly the woman was not alone.
Two spirits came through the walls in the room and took her spirit
by the hand. Together the three of them disappeared through the
wall and the lifeless body stayed behind.

I stood motionless and stared at the
picture for a long time. Then as I flipped through the book, I
realized all the pages were filled with pictures just like this
one. And in every one of them someone was dying. I flipped twenty
pages or so and saw a woman on an operating table in a hospital. I
flipped a couple more and saw a young man, no more than seventeen
or eighteen, lying on the floor in a pool of blood. Someone was
standing next to him. It made my heart race. The man raised a
baseball bat and hit the boy with it. Then he did it again and
again; the body just lay there lifeless. My eyes filled with tears.
How could anyone do something that cruel?

As the man kept hitting him, the boy
exhaled and his spirit emerged from him. Like in the other picture,
two spirits arrived through the wall and took the boy’s spirit with
them and left the body behind.

I caught my breath and took a few steps
backward. I realized I was shaking all over. Then I turned the
pages back to look at the picture of the old lady. It had started
all over again. She was lying in her bed and exhaling. It was like
that with all the pictures. They kept repeating the same sequence
over and over again.

I stormed out of the room and ran down the
hallway. I turned into another wide corridor that led me to a
ladder. I hurried down the rungs, thinking it looked like somewhere
I had been before. This led to a narrow passage, then a wonky
ladder that ended at a wall. I ran back and found a hall with armor
I was sure I had seen before. As I passed, the armor followed me
before it took a turn and went down another hallway.

I looked for a bell to ring but
couldn’t find any. Eventually I sat down in a chair and sighed.
After a few seconds I was sure I
felt the legs of the chair moving. It
began to walk sideways like a crab. Before I could get off, it
quickly dashed down the hall. I screamed for it to stop, but as it
ran I realized it was taking me in the right direction. Suddenly I
saw people in the hallway, floating while they were talking, with
books under their arms. They suddenly emerged from the walls, but
everybody went in the same direction as me and my chair. The chair
seemed to be slowing down now and I began to feel more
comfortable.

“
Oh, I see you have made a
new friend,” I heard a voice from behind me. A stream of peace and
love rushed through me and I knew it was Rahmiel.

“
The thinking chair is a
very good friend to have,” she said as she caught up with
me.

“
Is that what it’s called?” I
asked.

“
Yes, the thinking chair can
read your mind and will help you in any way if you are good to it.
But it will not help you if you are not nice and if your thoughts
and motives are not right.”

“
Ah, that is how it knew
where I wanted to go.”

The chair stopped in front of a closed
door.

“
It must have liked you right
away. Normally it takes more than one try and a lot of persuasion
to get it to help you. This is your classroom,” Rahmiel said.
“You’d better hurry; I think they have already started.” She leaned
over and whispered in my ear. “Don’t forget to thank the chair and
tickle it under the seat. It really likes that,” she said before
she left.

So I took a moment and found the spot. One
chair leg started moving and I could tell that it liked
it.

“
There now. I have to go
to class,” I said while petting it on the seat. “I hope the teacher
will not be too mad at me.”

I felt as though the chair smiled at me,
but I wasn’t sure. Then I turned and opened the door to the
classroom.

“
Well, look who has
decided to finally join us.”

It was Mrs. Higgins, the lady from the
boat. I felt so embarrassed. Giggles came from where Portia sat
with girl I remembered from dinner the night before.

“
Don’t just stand there.
Go and sit down,” Mrs. Higgins said.

I faked a smile and found a
seat.

“
As I was just telling the
class, I am going to teach you the History of the Afterlife. I will
not only fill you in on the proud history of this Academy, but also
on the history of the Spiritual Realm. As you know, you have
entered the spirit world, the world of Ru’ach. This world is filled
with possibilities, and you will be amazed at you what you are
capable of doing. This is your first full day in the Afterlife and
there is a lot you don’t know. But don’t worry; by the time you
graduate from this place, you will know all you need to
know.”

She looked at the class and then turned to
the blackboard behind her. It was an old-fashioned chalkboard. I
noticed she had a feather pen with a silver inkwell on her desk. It
occurred to me how old everything seemed to be, like nothing had
happened here for hundreds of years.

“
As you know by now, you have
all lost your physical body but you still exist as a spirit,” Mrs.
Higgins continued. “Not many people on earth are aware that they
have a spirit that will still exist even when their physical body
dies. There are several academies like this in the Afterworld,
about four hundred or so, that take care of the spirits and prepare
them for the Afterlife. Just before a spirit is born into a body it
is appointed to an academy and it follows you through your earthly
life and helps you get to the right place once your earthly body is
dead.”

That explained a lot to me, like what I
saw in those pictures. They had captured these people’s deaths and
just repeated it again and again. But I didn’t understand why. What
purpose did those horrible pictures have?

“
Now there are many things you
can chose to do in your eternal life, and I will get back to all
that later. But I can tell you that whatever your life was like on
earth, it will not be like that here in the Afterlife. You will
never go hungry or be weary again. Diseases can’t reach you,
neither can cold nor warmth. From now on you are to enjoy your
lives to the full extent. However, I do hope you chose to spend
your time in eternity doing something good and
valuable.”