Beyond (Afterlife book 1) (5 page)

Mr. Grangé’s arms lifted his head up in
the air so he could look down at us. It was quite a
sight.

“
Very well, then. Let me
show you,” he said.

Without a sound he started soaring
straight up in the open air. Over our heads he circled faster and
faster while screaming with delight and laughing.

The class all gaped at him.

“
Wow!” one student
said.

“
Oh là là!” Mr. Grangé yelled.
”I am getting so dizzy … come on, this must be something you are
all dying to try!”

Then he soared even further into the air
before he let his body fall until he almost hit the grass. Then he
soared into the air again.

“
It is like the best
roller-coaster ride you have ever tried!” he yelled from high up in
the air.

None of us could help smiling. This looked
really fun. I couldn’t wait to try it myself, but I didn’t want to
be the first one to go.

Mr. Grangé came down and stood in front of
us. He took a moment to catch his breath.

“
It is a lot of fun,” he
said. “But you get exhausted.”

Everyone was dying to try, but still no one
said it out loud.

“
Now what are you waiting for?
There is a whole new world ready for you out there,” Mr. Grangé
said. “At my count to three you all try to jump into the air and
stay there.”

Nigel put his hand in the air.

“
Oh no, not him again,” I
heard Portia whisper. One of her friends giggled.

“
Yes, Nigel?”

“
Do we need to do anything
like flap our arms or something like that? I mean how do we stay in
the air?”

Mr. Grangé sighed. “My dear Nigel. You no
longer have a body that can pull you down. You are nearly
weightless. There is not much that the gravity can pull on. It is
all in your minds. If you believe you can do it, you
can.”

“
Oh, okay,” Nigel said not
too convinced. “Do we need to say anything? Is there a rhyme or a
spell or anything we can say?”

“
No, Nigel. Just think happy
thoughts, like in Peter Pan, all right?”

The class laughed.

Mr. Grangé looked at us with a smile from
under his arm. “Now at the count of three …”

I felt my heart racing. I closed my eyes and
concentrated.

“
One … Two …”

This was it!

“
Three…”

All fifteen of us jumped into the air. I
felt the weightlessness under my feet and as I opened my eyes I
realized I was hanging two feet over the ground. I was excited and
looked around to see my classmates. While Portia had soared right
into the air and was hanging high above all of us, Nigel hadn’t
moved at all. He stood on the grass with his eyes closed and looked
determined, but he hadn’t jumped. When he opened his eyes and saw
the rest of the class hanging in the air he looked sad.

Mr. Grangé tried to cheer him up. “Some
people just have their feet more solidly planted on the ground than
others,” he said. “Did you mother tell you to always keep your feet
on the ground?”

Nigel nodded while sobbing.

“
It is okay, boy. You will
master it soon enough.”

Nigel kept sobbing.

“
Let’s try again, shall
we?” Mr. Grangé asked and signaled the rest of us to come back
down.

Portia was already circling in the sky
shrieking and laughing, taking dives toward the rest of us, making
us scared that she would bump into us.

“
Uhm, Mr. Grangé?” I
asked.

He smiled at me. “Yes, Meghan?”

“
How exactly do we get
down from here?”

Mr. Grangé laughed. “Well, now that is the
next step. Getting down.” He addressed the rest of the class. “Does
anyone know how we get down on the ground again?”

The class was silent again. Only Portia
was shouting in the air.

“
It is very simple, really. How
did you walk or jump or run in the human body? You just thought
about it. You thought
now I want to run
and then you did.”

It sounded really simple, so I
tried.
I
want to get down to the ground
, I thought to myself. And it worked. Slowly I
slid back down. And so did the rest of the class. Except for
Portia.

“
Portia! Get down from
there!” Mr. Grangé yelled.

I looked up and saw Portia stop in the
air. Then I saw her fall from the sky. I saw her face getting
closer and closer. I heard her gasp and pant and try to regain
control. Before I could move, she crashed right into me. Or rather
she went right through me. It felt so weird, like some great force
was pulling through my entire body. After she had gone through me,
I felt exhausted and tumbled to the ground next to
Portia.

“
Are you all right?” Mr. Grangé
asked bending over me.

“
I guess,” I said. “A
little shaken.”

I looked at Portia.

“
Me too,” she
said.

Mr. Grangé smiled and looked at the class.
“See? Nothing will happen if you fall to the ground. You can’t get
hurt, since you don’t have a physical body. But since you were a
human just a few days ago, you still think like one. I have to get
you to think differently. You have to let go of the earthly way of
thinking. Now what made Portia fall?”

Mr. Grangé paused before he answered the
question himself. “She got scared. She was afraid because she
thought she didn’t know how to get down again.”

Portia snorted. “No, I wasn’t. You just
broke my concentration.”

Mr. Grangé smiled at her. “Only fear and
human thinking can make you fall like that,” he said.

Portia obviously didn’t agree. She snorted
again and got on her feet.

We all got back in the line again.

“
Now … on three. One … Two
… Three …”

Again we leaped into the air. This time I
had my eyes open and soared a little higher than the first time.
Unfortunately Nigel still hadn’t left the ground. He looked at the
rest of us with envy in his eyes. Now that we felt like we had
gotten the hang of this, we started to move first in one direction,
then in another. It was so easy once we let go of the fear of
falling and just tried it.

Abhik especially seemed to enjoy the
freedom of flying through the air. I flew with him for awhile and
we were laughing and loving the tickling feeling of the air going
through our bodies. I tried to spin and do air acrobatics, while
Abhik danced and jumped in the air. This was wonderful. Total
freedom to go wherever we wanted.

I looked down and saw Portia and her friends
giggling and making fun of Nigel behind his back. His big eyes
stared at all of us in the air. I felt sorry for him so I
approached Nigel from the air and reached out my hand toward
him.

“
Grab it,” I
said.

He shook his head. “But I can’t,” he said.
“I don’t know how to!”

I smiled gently at him. “Yes you do. You
just have to let go.”

Nigel stared at me for a few seconds looking
as if he really didn’t get what I told him.

“
Come on,” I said. “Just
trust me.”

Slowly Nigel put his hand in mine. I
looked him in the eyes. “Now remember, it’s all in your mind so
don’t overthink it, okay?”

He closed his eyes and nodded. Then slowly
I pulled him upward holding both his hands.

“
That’s it. Just let go …”
I said as his body followed me into the air. When we were about
three feet above the ground I gently let go of his
hands.

“
Now open your eyes,” I
said.

He looked at me. His eyes seemed scared.

“
Now look
down.”

“
Wow!” he said.

I laughed.

“
How did you do that?” he
asked.

“
I didn’t do anything; you
did.”

Our teacher Mr. Grangé joined us in the
air.

“
Very nice, Meghan, very
nice,” he said. “I don’t think I have ever seen one Ru’ach be able
to pull another one into air before.”

I felt like I blushed. I hoped that no one
could tell.

“
I am very glad to see you
helping each other,” he continued. Then Mr. Grangé left us to
attend some of the other students who had problems learning how to
fly lying down.

“
Look who’s the teacher’s pet!”
It was of course Portia flanked by her friends Mai and Acacia. She
sneered. “In love with the teacher, are we?” Portia made kissing
sounds with her big red lips. “He is kind of cute, I give you that,
but I like them better with their heads on!”

“
Leave us alone,” I
said.

Portia lifted her nose and snorted again.
Then she and her friends soared laughing into the air. I tried not
to pay attention to their constant laughing at the others in the
class. It was like high school all over again, I thought. And that
was one thing I didn’t miss from my life on earth.

After class we went back inside, but no
one walked on the ground any longer. We had simply discovered that
it was much easier to fly or just float a few feet above the
ground. Even Nigel floated, although he stayed as close to the
ground as possible.

But he never walked on his feet again and
neither did I.

Chapter 6

The next days were like an
adventure for me. A whole new world open
ed up one class at a time, and soon I
was getting used to this new way of life. I hadn’t had much time to
think about my parents or loved ones or the fact that I was
actually dead. Instead we learned so many new things that I really
didn’t think I had lost my life any longer, but gained a new and
much better one.

History with Mrs. Higgins still was the
most boring class, but I grew fond of it somehow along the way. I
enjoyed hearing about the Angels and all they had done and what
they were capable of. The more I learned about the Afterworld, the
more I realized that the Underworld and its demons and Se’irims
played a rather big role as well.

Mrs. Higgins never wanted to go much into
it, but I sensed that whatever was down there was dangerous both to
us and to the humans who never knew it was among them.

“
One of the things we Ru’achs
can do is to guide and help the humans,” Mrs. Higgins explained to
us. “We are what the humans like to refer to as their sixth sense
or intuition. It is something spirits can do. We can affect the
minds of humans and guide them in making the right decisions. You
could say that we are like the small cricket on Pinocchio’s
shoulder.”

That made the whole class laugh and Mrs.
Higgins smiled as well at her own little joke before she continued.
“We are like a small conscience telling humans right from wrong.
But unfortunately, we are not the only ones there. The evil Se’irim
will whisper things in their ears as well and give them evil
thoughts. Thoughts that lead them to feel angry at someone or
something, thoughts that will lead them to feel greedy or want
revenge or feel jealous. For example if a couple is fighting, then
I can put thoughts in the woman’s head like, ‘It is okay; he
doesn’t know what he is doing. He doesn’t know he is hurting you
when he says that. There is no need to make this into a big deal.
Just forgive him. You know you love him.’

“
But then the Se’irim would say:
‘He doesn’t love you when he says that. He doesn’t even care. No
one ever thinks about you. You do all the work around here, and he
does nothing. When is it your turn to relax and have some
fun?’

“
Now the problem is we can’t do
anything more than that. We can place thoughts in human’s heads,
but
they
must make their choice. They decide if they want to follow one
advice or the other. But if they choose the Se’irim’s advice, the
fighting will surely continue; if they choose ours it will stop.
Unfortunately humans don’t realize that the thoughts come from us,
therefore they often choose wrongly. It is in their human flesh to
choose feelings like anger, hurt, and greed over forgiveness, love,
and compassion. That is why they need us to guide them,” Mrs.
Higgins explained.

I was wowed. All of a sudden it came to me
that there was an ongoing battle between the evil forces and the
good ones—the battle over humans. But I never seemed to be able to
get Mrs. Higgins to talk about how those Se’irims could affect us.
I asked several times but never got a straight answer from
her.

In our self-defense class I got a little
closer. Here our teacher—Professor Hjalte Havskäg, an old ancient
Viking from Denmark—told us how to defend ourselves against demons
and the Se’irims. He was huge and looked exactly as you would
expect a Viking to look. He had a big beard that he told us used to
be red like his hair, a helmet with horns, a big cool axe of some
sort and muscles growing on top of muscles. He always groaned and
roared and told us he used to have hair growing between his
teeth.

He had fought many demons in his time, as
well as dragons and zombies, as he said.

“
We even had a poltergeist
living with us on our boat when we sailed the Norwegian and Baltic
seas,” he roared.