Beyond (Afterlife book 1) (6 page)

We didn’t quite know what to believe of
all his many stories that got wilder with each telling. More evil
creatures would emerge, like vampires and evil wizards and witches.
It seemed like he had gotten it all mixed up a little bit over the
years. He had been dead for more than a thousand years, so maybe we
couldn’t blame him for making the stories a little more colorful
along the way.

But he did know how to fight. Not only by
swords, axes, and fistfights, which he was indeed quite good at,
but he also told us how the demons and Se’irims will try to
mind-trick us.

“
First they tell you that you
are no good, that you will never be any good,” he growled. “But
don’t you dare believe them. It is all in your minds, you know.
They will especially try to attack you now when you are fresh and
new and vulnerable. That is when you need to defend
yourself.”

“
Pah,” said Portia. “I am
not scared of that.”

Hjalte Havskäg looked at her with one eye
while closing the other. “But you should be. Those who don’t
protect their hearts against the evil ones will fall into their
hands,” he said. “Se’irims are among the most vicious creatures.
They haunt the darkest and dirtiest places. They flourish in
despair and decay. They suck all life, peace, hope, and happiness
out of people who are near them and who choose to believe what they
say. All humans sense their presence even though they do not see
them like we do. They lie to the humans and to us and they will use
your own mind against you. They are nothing but the purest
evil.”

A sound of shock went through the class.

“
Pah,” said Portia again.
“You are just making up stories again. We all know none of them are
real.”

”
But you must believe what I
tell you. No one will go free. The Se’irims will try to make you
join them on the other side. They will lure you, and tempt you into
believing you are better off serving the dark side. Every year we
see examples of students who make the wrong choice. We call them
fallen. We even have examples of Angels who have fallen. Everybody
is in danger of becoming their victim. Not even those who are
closest to our Mighty God can be safe. They go after anyone who
will let them in. And you are the easiest targets of all they can
find. You have to remember that you are still children and you
haven’t totally let go of your human nature yet. And the evil ones
use that against you. They know the secret desires of your human
flesh and they will use that to get to you. Don’t you let them.
Argh, don’t you let them into your poor little hearts.”

Portia looked at him with contempt but I
couldn’t help noticing she also looked a little frightened. As did
we all, I guess.

My worst class, I quickly realized, was
The Art of Transition. It was taught in the cellar of the castle.
Our teacher was Mrs. Ohayashi, a small Japanese woman in a kimono.
She had narrow, almost black eyes that seemed cold and empty. I had
a hard time looking in her eyes because they always made me feel
like they would suck me right into her.

And she didn’t like me from the beginning.
I could tell right away. Not only didn’t she like me, she seemed to
detest everything I did and said in class. And I wasn’t very good
at this. Not at first that is. Maybe it was my insecurity, maybe it
was her, I don’t know. But it took me forever to get the hang of
it.

However,
she seemed to love Portia and
her friends, and most of her classes ended up making me look like a
complete fool and then laughing at it.

It all started the day we were supposed to
learn how to walk through walls. Mrs. Ohayashi had put up a thin
cardboard wall for us to practice on. And of course she chose me to
be the first one to try.

“
Well come along,” she said and
signaled with her long fingernails that I should approach.
Reluctantly I got up from my chair and floated toward her. I knew I
would have a hard time with this. I knew it was possible, but I
clearly remembered the time Portia went through me on the football
field. That was not a pleasant experience.

“
Put the palm of your hand
on the wall,” Mrs. Ohayashi said.

So I did. I felt the wall underneath my
palm.

“
Now slowly press it
through the wall.”

I remember being so afraid of the feeling. I
smiled awkwardly and looked at the teacher.

“
Just do it!” she suddenly
screamed.

So I did. I pressed my hand through the
cardboard wall. It felt weird but the feeling wasn’t too bad. I
looked at the other side and started waving my hand. Then I
laughed, a strange, insecure laughter. When I turned to look at the
class, I realized my hand was stuck. I panicked and I couldn’t get
my hand back. It was as if the cardboard closed in on my wrist and
wouldn’t let go. I pulled and pulled, but couldn’t get it back
out.

Then I heard a big laughter behind me. It
belonged to Mrs. Ohayashi.

“
Please, Mrs. Ohayashi,” I said.
“Please help me get my hand back.”

Then the whole class was laughing.

“
Help me,
please.”

Mrs. Ohayashi didn’t help me, instead she
addressed the class. She had a way of silencing us without saying
anything, just by a look.

“
Now, prove to me that you are
not as stupid as Meghan and all the other idiots I normally have in
this class. Please, can anyone tell me what Meghan did wrong
here?”

Of course Portia raised her hand.

“
Yes, Portia?”

“
Meghan didn’t believe in
it. She was afraid.”

“
Exactly. The worst thing you
can do is to doubt yourself and your own abilities. That is an
earthly way of thinking and it will not work here in the Afterlife.
Anyone who will believe can be mighty and powerful.”

“
Ahem,” I said. “How do I
get my hand out?”

Mrs. Ohayashi came awful close to my ear.
Then she whispered:

“
Just pull it
out.”

I looked at her with disbelief, when she
grabbed on to my arm and pulled in it. Like the wall had been made
of water the hand came straight out.

The class burst into giggles. Mrs.
Ohayashi’s lips curled.

“
Now you’d better sit down
before you hurt yourself,” she hissed at me.

I bowed my head and ran to my chair. She
followed me and looked me straight in the eyes.

“
Don’t ever come to my class
without reading your homework!” she yelled so loudly, most of the
students jumped in their chairs.

I forced myself to keep looking
at her. I had read the book
Basics of Transition
and I knew all there was to know. I
just didn’t know how to put it into practice in real
life.

When
I got back to my room that night, I
stayed up late to practice. I kept trying to put my hand through my
pillow, which I assumed would be soft and easy. And after a few
hours I finally got it. My hand slipped right through every time.
But that was just a hand, and just through a pillow. I was still
far from pushing my whole body through a solid brick
wall.

Chapter 7

We had the weekends off. No
school, no class, no Mrs. Ohayashi. The weekends ruled. I spend
most of them hanging out with Abhik. We loved to go flying together
outside the castle. And we were allowed to do that as long as we
stayed near the castle. We were not allowed to leave the
castle
grounds and especially not allowed to go near the
humans.

“
Anyone who is caught leaving
the Academy’s campus will be punished stringently,” Mrs. Higgins
had told us one of the first days. So we stayed where we were
supposed to be and tried to make the best of it.

One weekend a couple of months later, I
went out with Abhik as usual. We jumped from the windows in my
dormitory and let ourselves float over the big ocean.

Spending time with him was one of my
favorite activities, since he was the only one I knew at the
Academy who just enjoyed being there. He never complained about
anything, and he was happy, content, and pleased with all this new
stuff we were learning. I loved to look at his eyes because they
were filled with such a childlike happiness when we flew. He was
like a kid the night before Christmas.

“
What do you think life
will be like when we are done at the Academy?” I asked him as we
floated through the blue sky.

He smiled one of his beautiful smiles.
“All I know is that it will be great,” he said.

A couple of clouds had gathered in front
of us and he looked at me while his smile turned crooked. “I’ll
race you to them,” he said and speeded ahead of me. “Try to catch
me if you can.”

“
Oh, no you won’t!” I yelled and
speeded up as well. A second later I had caught up with him as we
neared the clouds. When we got close to them Abhik looked at me
again and gave it a notch more so he was now in front of me. He was
too fast for me. Then he threw himself into the biggest cloud and
rolled around in it while laughing. I did the same with a smaller
one. I rolled around in it until I fell off and landed on Abhik’s
cloud and rolled right into him. Then we laughed till the tears
rolled down our cheeks. I got up on my legs, jumped onto a passing
cloud and tried to stand on it. That was always the hard
part.

”
Look at me, I am
surfing!” I screamed. Far underneath me I could see the mighty
ocean and the castle.

Now Abhik tried as well. But his cloud moved
too fast and he fell off.

“
I am better than you!” I
yelled at him the second before my own cloud threw me off as well
and I fell into the air.

Abhik grabbed my hand and we floated on our
backs for awhile, looking into the blue sky.

“
How do you know?” I
asked.

“
How do I know
what?”

“
How do you know it is
going to be great?”

He turned his head and looked at me. His
eyes were so joyful and sparkling, yet had a sadness that I
couldn’t quite figure out.

“
Because ever since I got
here my life has just been getting better and better every
day.”

I looked at the sky again. An eagle passed
us with a shriek.

“
Yeah, it is great and
all, but how do you know it is better than what it was like when we
were humans?”

Abhik smiled. His teeth were pearly
white.

“
Look at me,” he said. “I died
in a hospital gown. I lived and died in the hospital. I admit I
don’t remember much about my life as a human, but what I do
remember I really don’t want to go back to.”

“
What do you
remember?”

“
I remember going in and out of
hospitals. I remember having tests taken, a lot of blood work and
stuff. Like constantly. I remember lying in a bed with tubes
everywhere. I remember being in a lot of pain all the time. I
remember being afraid all the time. I remember looking out the
window at a puddle of water and just wishing I could go and jump in
it and have fun. I remember longing to go outside again. To smell
the fresh air, to go to a playground or a park, to see the ocean …
I remember all that. And had I known all this was waiting for me,
maybe I wouldn’t have been so afraid.”

“
And maybe you wouldn’t
have fought for your life either,” I said thinking that it made
sense that no one told us this was what waited after our human
lives were over. Then no one would want to be human.

Abhik nodded.

“
I guess you are right,”
he said.

I spotted a new and even bigger cloud not
far from us.

“
I’ll race you to that
one!” I said and flew as fast as I could toward the white puffy
cloud.

Later when it was dinnertime and we had
gotten our plates full, Abhik and I were having a nice time
chatting and talking. Mick came out of the kitchen after preparing
our food and joined us at the round table. I remember being
incredibly hungry. Flying always did that to me. It still does. I
was shoveling both lasagna and T-bone steak into my mouth at the
same time.

“
How come we are not
allowed to go outside the Academy’s area?” Abhik asked Mick. “It is
kind of boring to be flying in the same area all the time. There is
a whole world out there to explore. Could you imagine flying over
the Taj Mahal?”

“
Or the Statue of
Liberty,” I said.

Mick smiled. “That day will come when you
graduate, but right now you are not trained enough to go outside
the school. What if someone saw you?”

“
You mean like
humans?”

“
Yes, that would be
horrible. How do we explain that to Salathiel? You are not done
with your training yet and therefore not allowed to go out of the
school area. Those are the rules.”

“
It is not like spirits
haven’t been seen in the human world before,” Abhik said. “Some
humans even have pictures of spirits that they think haunt their
houses.”

Mick shook his head. “Those are only
examples of why you shouldn’t be running off to the humans just
yet. Those are spirits who have not been careful
enough.”