Beyond (Afterlife book 1) (4 page)

A boy raised his hand.

“
Yes, Nigel?” Mrs. Higgins
said.

“
Where did all the bad
people go? Are they here too?”

Mrs. Higgins sighed. “No, they are not
here. They went somewhere else,” she said.

“
Where?”

“
You don’t want to
know.”

Another boy raised his hand.

“
Yes, Alberto?”

“
I was sure I saw Michael
Jackson in the hall; was that really him? Does that mean that he
was in fact innocent?”

Mrs. Higgins sighed again and sat down
behind her desk.

“
I don’t know any details about
the spirits who come here, or about the lives they have lived on
earth. It is all a little complicated, kids,” she said. “There is a
place for evil spirits, where demons rule over them. In the dark
world. We call the evil spirits Se’irims. But who goes where is not
something we decide. That is done for us by God.”

“
So there are no evil Sri ... ms
... here?” Nigel asked.

“
Se’irims,” she corrected him.
“And no. You will not find them here in our school … hopefully
not.”

Nigel wiped his forehead with the back of
his hand. “Phew.”

“
I’ve heard that some spirits
change during their stay here,” Portia said, her green eyes
lighting up her pale face. “That some are drawn to both worlds and
chose to serve the dark and more powerful spirits.”

“
They are certainly not more
powerful. I don’t know who would have told you such nonsense,” Mrs.
Higgins said while snorting.

Portia stuck her small nose in the air.
“That’s what I heard.”

“
Well, it is wrong. It is true
that there are cases of what we call fallen Angels and fallen
Ru’achs. They are the ones who choose to serve the darkness instead
of the light. ” Mrs. Higgins paused. Then she opened an old book in
front of her. “Now everybody turn to page 23 of your
textbook.”

History of the Living Dead turned out to
be a rather boring class. It was kind of cool in the beginning
though, when we got to hear about all the famous Angels. But then
we had to learn all their names and scribble them down.

“
Angels stay very close to God
most of the time, but we do see them among us, like Salathiel and
Rahmiel,” Mrs. Higgins explained. “They are both Angels and very
close to our Almighty Father. Salathiel is one of the first Angels.
He was the rescuing Angel of Adam and Eve.”

Nigel raised his hand again.

“
I don’t seem to remember him
from the Bible.”

“
No, there is a lot of our
history that hasn’t been written down for humans. That is why you
need this history lesson. When Adam and Eve were expelled from the
Garden of Eden they went through a lot of trials and temptations.
Satan told them that he was an Angel sent from God, and he lured
them to a mountain and made them climb it while wanting to throw
them down and kill them. The Angels Salathiel and Suriyel were sent
by God to bring them down from the high mountain.”

“
Cool,” Nigel said without
raising his hand. “So he is a real Angel?”

“
Indeed he is. And so is
Rahmiel. She is the Angel of mercy and love.”

That explained the feelings she gave us
all in her presence—the feelings of peace and of being loved. She
was pretty cool, I thought.

The rest of the history class was quite
boring, I thought. All the historic stuff that we had to memorize
made my mind drift off for a minute or two. I kept thinking about
that poor boy in the picture. Was it real what I had seen? Had it
already happened? I kind of understood the whole spirit thing a
little better, though. Apparently that was something we Ru’achs
did. At least some did. When a person on earth died we would go and
help their spirit cross over to the Afterlife. I kind of liked that
and I wondered if there had been anyone helping me when I had died.
If so, then who had done it? And did those spirits put me on the
boat?

Later, during lunch break I sneaked into
the kitchen and found Mick. He sat in the window smoking a
cigarette.

“
Are you allowed to do
that here?” I asked.

Mick smiled. He threw the cigarette out
the window. “What could happen? Are you afraid I would
die?”

That made me laugh. “I guess
not.”

I climbed on the kitchen table and looked
out the giant window he was sitting in. The view of the ocean
beneath the castle and the mighty cliffs made me dizzy.

“
What is it?” Mick
asked.

I swallowed a lump in my throat. “I am
afraid of heights,” I said.

Now it was Mick’s turn to laugh out loud. I
smiled too.

“
I know. Crazy isn’t it? I mean
I can’t remember my parents or the people that I love, but I do
remember that I’m afraid of heights.” I said.

He looked at me intensely with his blue
eyes. They became like small cracks when he smiled. Then he made a
very elegant movement with his arm and spoke. “In the Afterlife
there is absolutely nothing to be afraid of. You have to let go of
all your earthly fears.”

He was right; I knew that. Our teachers
had been saying the same thing over and over again all morning.
This was a big part of why they needed this Academy, to get people
to think like spirits and not like humans.

“
Is there really nothing
to be afraid of here?”

I saw the expression in Mick’s eyes
change.

“
There is something, isn’t
there?” I asked.

Mick floated away from the window and into
the kitchen, turning his back at me.

“
What is it?”

He sighed and turned to look at me.“It is
not my job to educate you; ask your teachers,” he said, for the
first time being a little dismissive toward me.

“
Our teacher already told
us there are demons and Se’irims. Can they harm us?”

Mick remained quiet. I jumped down from
the window and walked closer to him, trying to catch his blue eyes
and look into them.

“
They can!” I yelled.
“How?”

He shook his head heavily.

“
You have to ask someone
else about that,” Mick said without looking at me. “I am busy. It
is lunchtime, as you know.”

I looked at the kitchen table in front of
him. It was empty. Not a vegetable or a piece of meat in sight. And
lunch was about to begin in the hall. The lunch bell had already
been ringing. Several hundred Ru’achs waited for food to arrive on
their plates. And not just any food, the food they each
individually wanted right now. All their favorite dishes. I looked
forward to seeing how Mick did this.

Then the oddest thing happened. He closed
his eyes and rubbed his hands together. I stared with big eyes as
smoke seemed to emerge from his hands. I began to feel concerned
that something was very wrong.

Then I saw it. The smoke slowly floated
through the air into Hornam Hall where I now heard cheering and
laughter. I ran and peeked through the door. As the smoke filled
the hall and touched the plates, food of all kinds emerged on each
of them. Exotic Asian food for some, meat and potatoes for others,
even burgers and fries for those who loved that.

I went back to Mick in the kitchen. He was
still concentrating.

“
So that is how you do
it,” I said.

“
Mmm…” he answered.

I must say I was impressed to put it
mildly.

“
It’s all in our
heads?”

Mick stopped and looked at me. He seemed a
little exhausted. “The food is there all right,” he said. “But it
is not like the food on earth. The fact is that we don’t really
need food as spirits, but we do enjoy eating. That is one thing we
bring from earth, and since we are meant to be enjoying our lives
here, food plays a big part of that.”

“
So you make some kind of
illusion that we are having food?”

He nodded again. “You can call it that,
yes. Most of the students know it by now. They tell you in the
second year.”

“
What about sleeping? I
slept last night and had a strange dream. Do we really need
sleep?”

“
No. We think need our
sleep, just like we think we need food and other earthly things we
enjoy. We can live without it, but it was such a big part of when
we were humans, so we still do it in the Afterlife. Some Ru’achs
stop eventually, but some keep eating and sleeping. But most
Ru’achs don’t dream.”

“
I did.”

“
That is strange. I haven’t had
a dream since I got here. Maybe you are different. Like people, no
two spirits are alike. We all have different skills and
gifts.”

“
Like you—you make illusions.
That is a cool gift.”

Mick smiled. “I guess it is what you would
call cool,” he said.

“
What about the pictures
in that book?” I asked after a short silence.

He looked at me. “What
pictures?”

“
The pictures of people
dying. I found them in a huge book in a room somewhere when I was
lost earlier today.”

“
That is not something you
are supposed to be looking at.”

“
Well I did. I was lost
and the door wasn’t locked. If they didn’t want me to go in there
the least they could do is to lock the door.”

Mick looked at me and smiled. “You mean
they should lock a door in a castle filled with spirits who walk
through walls?” He burst into laughter.

“
Okay, I hadn’t thought of that.
But anyway, I saw them and they scared the crap out of
me.”

“
Well if you really must know,
those are the ‘meant-to-be’ pictures. They show the people who are
supposed to go to this academy when they die. They show how they
will die.”

“
How they will die? Are
you kidding me? Does that mean I just saw how several people on
earth are supposed to go?”

The very thought made my stomach lurch. I
thought the pictures were of people already dead. This was really
horrible.

“
When will this
happen?”

“
If you noticed, underneath each
picture there was a date. It is so we know when it is time to go
get them. The pictures prepare us for the situation, so the Ru’achs
who are assigned to go to these people and accompany their spirits
here know what they will meet there.”

I had noticed a lot of numbers underneath
the pictures but hadn’t thought much of it. Now I understood, but
that also meant the boy would die by the hands of that horrible
man. Knowing that made me shiver.

Chapter
5

Professor Grangé, my teacher in
Metamorphosis, was really cool. He died during the French
revolution and had his head chopped off in the guillotine. He told
us all about how he used to be a French aristocrat, how he had
eaten with the French King Louis the sixteenth, and how he used to
dance at the king’s many balls at the mighty castle of
Versailles.

The professor
walked around with
his head under his arm. When he was teaching, he put it on the
table while he spoke. In the beginning we didn’t hear much of what
he was saying; everybody just stared at the talking head on top of
the desk. He was used to that reaction from newcomers, he
said.

“
We call this class
Metamorphosis, since that is exactly what you are going through
now. On earth people talk about metamorphosis in the animal world .
It is a biological process by which an animal physically develops
after birth or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively
abrupt change in the animal's body structure through cell growth
and differentiation, such as when a butterfly comes out of its
cocoon. That is what has happened to you now. You have been trapped
in that horrible earthly body for years and now it is time to
fly.”

I got the chills. I had been waiting for
this. But being afraid of heights I was also a little scared.

“
You already have the
ability to fly, but you just haven’t developed it yet. You still
think as humans and therefore you don’t believe that you can
actually fly. Once I have taught you how to do it, you will never
have to walk or run anymore.”

“
Cool,” said the chubby Frederic
Cornwell with a smirk. Alexandra nodded and smiled as well. For
once he and his sister found something they could agree
about.

After a short theory lesson, we went
outside for our first practical flying lesson. The new students
used the Academy’s football field to practice. We lined up, facing
the headless Mr. Grangé.

“
Now who wants to be the first
to try?” he said while walking back and forth in front of us with
his head under his arm.

No one said a word. I was not going to make
a fool of myself in front of the whole class. I just knew I would
fall flat on my face.

“
Really?” Mr. Grangé
asked. ”Not a single volunteer?”

The silence was unpleasant. I kept hoping
someone would step forward. Anyone as long as it wasn’t
me.