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.”
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.
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 grou
nd 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?”