Beyond (Afterlife book 1)

  “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.”

  I nodded; it made sense.

  Mick took his plate and got up from his seat. He leaned toward me while talking in a low voice. “Try to enjoy your time here. You will get to the rest soon enough. Just be patient,” he said and pushed his chair back in its place. He left us with a “See you.”

  He had barely left before someone far less friendly turned up. It was Portia flanked by Acacia and Mai.

  “Talking to the maid, are we?” she asked.

  I sighed. “What do you want Portia?”

  She sat down at the table with her two friends next to her. She leaned over and whispered. “Some of us are going out tonight,” she said with a low voice.

  “You can’t,” I said shaking my head. “They lock the doors and windows at night and none of us are good enough to go through brick walls or double-glassed windows yet.”

  Portia smirked. I knew at that moment she had something planned, and it wasn’t good.

  “I have found a way out,” she whispered.

  “Oh no, Portia, you will just get in trouble.”

  She looked at me with contempt. “I forgot, you’re the teachers’ pet,” she said while her two friends giggled next to her.

  “Well if it keeps me out of trouble, then yes I am.”

  “Don’t you want to see what it is like to be near humans?”

  I have to admit I was tempted. But I pretended not to be.

  “No. Why?”

  Portia smiled. Her green eyes lit up.

  “Portia has learned something,” Acacia said. “A friend from the second year told her how to mess with the humans.”

  “Mess with humans, but—?”

  “They told us a lot of cool stuff,” Mai interrupted me. “Like how to move things around in their houses so they get all confused and uh … uh … how to go into their flat-screen TVs. They have done it a million times. And they get in their computers as well. They mess up everything. It is so awesome!”

  I was stunned. Where did all this come from? “But that is not our purpose! That is not what we do!”

  Portia rolled her eyes. “Told you she would be boring.”

  The two other girls nodded.

  “I will go!”

  I closed my eyes. It was Abhik.

  “No you won’t,” I said. “You heard what Mick said. It’s too dangerous.”

  Abhik looked at me.

  “I have been doing nothing all of my life. I need to do something. I need to go on an adventure.”

  I looked him in his eyes.

  “Please don’t do this,” I said.

  “I am going no matter if you come with us or not.”

  I sighed deeply. I couldn’t let him go alone.“Then I guess we will all go.”

  Chapter 8

  “I can’t believe you are going with them!”

  I was sitting on my bed alone with Jackline, the only other girl in our dormitory. She looked at me like I was the one who had come up with the whole idea.

  “You are going to get in so much trouble for this,” she said while shaking her head. That was when I realized for the first time that she was wearing a camouflage uniform. It was covered with bloodstains. I felt a stab in my heart. She had been a child soldier when she died, I thought. It was weird that I hadn’t noticed before, but we hadn’t been spending much time together since Jackline kept mostly to herself.

  She saw me staring at her.

  “See anything you like?” She asked with a harshness to her voice.

  I shook my head.

  “No, I am sorry. It is just this thing tonight …”

  “So why are you going there anyway?”

  “I need to go to keep an eye on Abhik and help him if he gets into some kind of trouble.”

  “He can take care of himself.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” I said.

  At that moment Portia stepped into the room still flanked by her two friends Acacia and Mai.

  “We leave as soon as the lights are out and everybody has fallen asleep,” she said. “Abhik will meet us in the common room.”

  Later I lay awake listening to Jackline breathe deeply. I had been wanting to ask Mick for advice but didn’t dare. What if he told some teacher or, even worse, Rahmiel and Salathiel with whom he seemed pretty close? Now I regretted not talking to him about it. After all, he had been to the human world as a spirit before. None of us had. We had no idea what it was like. I kept thinking about what we had learned in our self-defense class. Hjalte Havskäg had told us the Se’irims wanted to come after us and try to lure us on their side. Were we an easier target when we were away from the school?

  I sighed deeply and stared out the window. The full moon shone and made everything bright outside.

  “It is time. They are all asleep,” Portia whispered in the darkness of the room. “We’d better go now.”

  We rose from our beds and began to float through the room. Jackline kept sleeping heavily as we left the room in the tower. We went downstairs into the common room where Abhik sat waiting for us. He got up and looked at us with anticipation.

  “Are you ready for this?” Portia asked with a harsh voice.

  Abhik nodded eagerly. Too eagerly if you ask me.

  “Okay, listen. There is a mirror in the cellar, next to our Transitions classroom. Not many in this school know this, but it is a two-way-mirror. That means we can go through it and enter immediately into the world of the humans.”

  “But where do we end up?” I asked.

  “That is the beauty of it. We don’t know. I heard about it from the second-year students. They told me that you can go right through it and it will take you different places.”

  “That sounds a bit dangerous. Not knowing where we will end up,” I said anxiously.

  Portia rolled her eyes at me.

  “No one is forcing you to go. Stay here if you are scared,” she said, knowing that it would make me want to go even more. Just to show her.

  “Come on,” she said.

  The cellar was scary enough without the dripping sounds and the long shadows creeping along the walls. I had only been there during the day for Transitions class, and even then it was a creepy place. Maybe it wa
s just Mrs. Ohayashi and her narrow eyes that were always looking at me, but I really hated being down here.

  We flitted along the rocky corridors of the cellar and edged along the walls, keeping our eyes on every door and wall we passed, hoping that no teacher would suddenly come through it. At every corner we took, I expected to find Mrs. Ohayashi waiting for us. But she wasn’t there. Portia found a small path leading even further down into a small room with low ceilings.

  There was nothing in the room except a body-sized mirror at the end. It was lit up but there were no other lights in the room. The magnificent mirror had a frame plated with gold, with small sculptures of praying Angels all around. It was quite striking.

  We all stopped and stared at it in awe.

  “It is beautiful,” Acacia said reaching out to touch the frame.

  Portia pushed herself in front of it. The mirror showed nothing but the empty cellar room, since we as spirits had no reflection.

  “I will go first,” she said.

  “How do we know if we all will go to the same place?” Mai asked.

  “Adrian, who told me where to find it, said it stays tuned in to the same spot for quite awhile. Sometimes even months at a time.”

  “What is it used for?” I asked.

  Portia looked at me. “Why should we care?”

  Portia didn’t even wait for my answer before she put the palm of her hand on the mirror and it went straight through. With a small gasp she pulled it back.

  My heart was racing. Not because I had to go through the mirror. We had all gone through mirrors in class. It was one of the easier tasks, although I had a tendency to get a hand or a foot stuck in it. But it was mostly because I was scared of what was waiting on the other side. It could, after all, be leading us to a dangerous place. Who knows, maybe that second-year student was only pulling our leg?

  “I will go through and make sure the coast is clear,” Portia said. “Everybody will wait for me here.”

  Portia didn’t even think about it twice. She took one look at the rest of us who were all staring at her.

  “See ya!” she said before she stepped out toward the mirror and disappeared into it.

  We all gasped with excitement. And then we waited. It felt like an eternity, but still no sign of Portia. I felt a little anxious. After all not one of us knew anything about where she had gone.

  “Do you think she will ever come back?” Acacia asked nervously. “Oh no, what if she doesn’t? We will get in trouble for this, I just know it.”

  Abhik looked at me with fear in his eyes.

  “It will be okay, don’t worry,” I whispered to him.

  Acacia was still rambling on. “What if she met one of those … dark creatures, those … Se’irims … what if she … how will we explain that?”

  “Maybe we should go before anyone knows we were here …” Mai started but never finished.

  She was interrupted by Portia who suddenly stuck her head out through the mirror and stared at us with her green eyes.

  “Boo!”

  Acacia and Mai jumped. Portia laughed.

  “Ha! You should’ve seen your faces. You look like you have seen a ghost. Ha, ha, ha!”

  “It is not funny,” Acacia said. “We thought something had happened to you. Something really bad.”

  “Pah,” said Portia. “You were just afraid you would get caught.”

  She was right; that had been the two girls’ only concern when they thought their friend wouldn’t come back. For once I agreed with Portia.

  “What took you so long?” Abhik asked.

  “I had to check everything out and make sure that there was nothing for you chickens to be afraid of. And now I have. You are safe to go. What are you waiting for? Come on!”

  Portia’s head disappeared again through the mirror. We were all staring at each other before Abhik stepped forward.

  “I will go next,” he said.

  I looked at him. “You sure you want this?” I asked.

  He nodded while staring with determination into the big empty mirror in front of him.

  “The little sick boy is gone, Meghan. I feel more alive than ever. Kind of ironic isn’t it?”

  I had to admit it was. Here he stood in front of a mirror that didn’t show his reflection and in a way it manifested that he had ceased to exist. But yet he was next to me and so full of life. I had felt that way lately too, like this was only the beginning.

  “Then go,” I smiled. “I will follow you.”

  Abhik smiled at me before he put both his hands on the mirror and pressed them through. Soon the rest of his body followed and he was gone.

  I took in a couple of big breaths and stepped in front of the mirror. I had to hurry up. For all I knew Portia could have gotten Abhik into trouble already.

  I put my palms on the mirror, exhaled deeply and pressed my body through. I had no time to think or be worried that I would get stuck like in the classroom, and therefore I went straight through.

  I felt like my body was ripped to pieces and put back together again on the other side. I came out of a mirror and tumbled onto the floor.

  Portia stood right in front of me.

  “Quite the entrance,” she said with a smile.

  I caught my breath and got on my legs again. It still drained my energy to go through solid objects. I wondered if I would ever get used to it like other spirits who did this all the time.

  “Are you all right?” Abhik asked.

  “I will be,” I said and looked around. We seemed to be in a bathroom.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  Portia hushed me.

  “We are in a human house,” she whispered. “The mirror led us into a human bathroom.”

  “Who is living here? Are they out there now?”

  Portia shook her head.

  “They are all sleeping. I checked.”

  “Okay, so the important part is not to wake anyone up. How many are they? And where are they?”

  “There’s a woman in the bedroom. Her husband has fallen asleep downstairs in front of the TV. And then a son is sleeping in his room next to the woman’s room,” Portia said.

  “Okay, so all we have to make sure is—” I didn’t get any further before Portia interrupted me.

  “Here comes another one! Move over!” she said motioning that I needed to move aside.

  We heard a small shriek, and then Mai landed in the bathroom as well. Her small figure made it easy for her to go through, so she just floated past us.

  “Now we only have to wait for Acacia,” Portia whispered.

  Acacia was a much bigger girl like me. I’m not on the skinny side either, not that I am fat. Like me, she had a hard time going through things as well. So all we saw now was her hand pushed through and then it was like the mirror was bubbling underneath, as though she was trying to press through but made an imprint of her body and face instead. We heard her yell from the other side. It sounded like she was talking through a pillow.

  “I can’t get through this thing. It’s like the gateway is closed!”

  Portia and Mai giggled and I have to admit it looked rather funny. But I didn’t say anything.

  “Try again,” Portia said.

  So she did. Again we saw her face emerge and this time she got her head through, but then she was stuck.

  “Try to press your hands through,” Portia said. “Then we can pull you the rest of the way.”

  Acacia tried hard and groaned loudly. Slowly her hands came through and Portia and I each grabbed one.

  “On three …” Portia said.

  I nodded.

  “One … Two … Three…!”

  We pulled all we could but our hands kept slipping through hers. That was still something we needed to learn. How to hold on to things. Not having a physical body wasn’t as easy as it looked.

  Finally we had to give up. We kept trying but Acacia didn’t move one inch. So Portia told her to go back to the cellar.

&nbsp
; Acacia was disappointed and started arguing.

  “Come on! It is not fair that you get to go and have fun, and I don’t,” she said with the whining voice of a five-year-old.

  “We can’t spend all night trying to get you through this mirror, Acacia,” Portia said. “Wait for us there. We will bring you next time.”

  Acacia sighed deeply and then she wiggled her way back through the mirror again.

  “One less to worry about,” Portia said while opening the bathroom door slowly. It squeaked and we all looked at each other. Then Portia signaled that we should follow her.

  Slowly we floated through a hallway and found the stairs leading down to the living room. A man slept on the couch, wearing a white shirt and black pants. His tie was thrown on an armchair next to him. His black shoes were kicked off on the floor. He slept with his mouth open and head leaning on the back of the couch. He snored and his small moustache wiggled when he breathed. The table in front of him was filled with empty beer bottles. The big flat-screen TV showed an infomercial for fitness equipment.

  Portia and Mai giggled as they came close to the man. Portia took a deep breath and blew air in his face. I saw his hair move as if a draft had come through. Mai giggled again and then she tickled the man by touching his face with her finger. They circled around him and laughed.

  Suddenly he moved.

  He wiggled his nose and grumbled before he turned over to the side. Portia and Mai were surprised and moved back.

  “He’s too drunk to wake up,” Portia said and floated away from the man on the couch.

  “Yeah, he’s boring,” Mai said. “Let’s try something else.”

  Portia glanced around in the living room with that incredible smirk on her face.

  “Let’s make a mess,” she said.

  “Yay,” Mai said.

  I looked at Abhik. He looked disappointed, as though this wasn’t why he came here. I guess all he wanted was to come back to the human world as a new person. Maybe it sounds weird, but I think he wanted to see what it would be like to be in the human world without feeling pain, just being there, being able to move around as he wanted and wished, to do whatever he felt like.