The Afterlife Series Box Set

I looked at Mick with wide open eyes. Was he actually saying what I thought he was?

  “So you had to kill her?”

  “That was what they wanted, yes.”

  I exhaled. Mick sighed again.

  “What did you say to them?” I asked.

  “I was lost. I begged my father not to ask this of me, but he had made up his mind. There was no turning back. This was how it was going to be. It was the right thing to do, he said. My mother supported him. So did all of my siblings. Everyone wanted me to do this. Except me. I could never kill anyone. I tried to explain to them that I didn’t have the same anger toward her that they had. I did not feel like I had lost any honor. I did not tell them that I had looked her in the eyes and seen the fear nor did I tell them that I had given her money. How could I? They would have killed me as well for dishonoring the family.”

  “What did you do?”

  “The only thing I could do. I accepted and then I went out to look for her. I searched all the small towns on the island for months, hoping and praying that she would not be there when I arrived. If I found her, I had to follow through with it. And I just knew I could never do such a thing.”

  “Couldn’t you just not do it? Couldn’t you let her go and then tell them that you never found her?”

  “If only it were that easy. No, everybody on the island knew why I came to their town and everybody wanted to help my family. This was something the whole island talked about and my parents would definitely know it if I saw her and did not kill her. Someone would tell them.”

  “Wow. That didn’t leave you with much choice, did it?”

  Mick shook his head with a serious look. “I had to search and go where people told me they might have seen her and just hope that she was not still there when I arrived. And for months I was doing fine. A lot of people took me in and fed me. A few of them thought they knew where she was, but fortunately they were wrong. So eventually I began to think she might have been lucky enough to get away in time.”

  “Something tells me you weren’t that lucky,” I said and felt a pang in my heart when I saw the sadness in his eyes.

  He shook his head slowly.

  “No. I was not that fortunate. When I reached the capital, Reykjavik, I was taken in by a family who had seen her. And worst of all, they knew where she and Jón were hiding. They had heard of the tragedy that had struck my family and were willing to help me. They would even have their two sons, Magnús and Snorre, help me.”

  “So now there were witnesses?”

  “Yes. I was devastated. Now there was no way I could let Solrún and Jón run and then go back to tell my parents they had escaped. I lay awake the whole night speculating on how I could get out of that mess, and there was only one way.”

  I held my breath while I stared at Mick’s beautiful blue eyes. He was such a contrast to Jason’s dark nature. Mick had skin as light as ice. He was picture perfect. He had such a proud charisma. I could picture him riding an Icelandic horse across the country searching for that girl, worrying that he would actually find her.

  “You had to do it?”

  Mick nodded and stared at me. I felt a chill like ice-cold water running down my back.

  “I decided to follow through with my promise to my father. After all, it was the right thing to do. It was the honorable thing. So when I left the house with the two sons and my knife, I was determined. I was going to do it and then I had to live with myself the rest of my life.”

  “So what happened?”

  “We went to this small house close to the harbor where I had been told they were hiding. It was an old abandoned wooden house, or more of a shack to be exact. I kicked in the door and found them sitting on the floor holding each other tightly. Solrún looked up and stared directly into my eyes. I remember my heart stopped for several seconds. I just looked into her eyes and saw how she was begging for my mercy. Begging me to let them go. Then Jón got up and approached us. He told us to take him but spare her. It was his entire fault, he said. He had taken her against her will. She had nothing to do with it. Magnús and Snorre said it would never be enough to restore my family’s honor. I needed to kill the girl as well before I could return to my hometown. So I lifted the knife and went toward her. Jón was crying and screaming at me, while Magnús and Snorre held him down. I approached the girl with the knife and saw how she went down on her knees and started praying. She closed her eyes and asked God to receive her. She was ready to come home, she said. That was when I stopped. I stood for a long time and stared at her. I heard Jón moan and Magnús and Snorre growl as they fought to keep him down. But I was frozen. I couldn’t do it. So I dropped the knife on the floor, turned around and left. I ran for hours in the freezing rain, until I had no more strength. Then I tumbled onto the ground and lay there lifeless for a long time until someone came by and picked me up. I had a high fever and was unconscious for two days. When I woke up I was in a stranger’s house. They had taken me in and taken care of me. When I got back on me feet I continued to flee, well knowing it was only a matter of time before my family would find me. And so they did. Six months later they found me hiding in a small shack in the country. I had been helping out on a nearby farm in exchange for food and shelter. Now they kicked my door down.”

  “Your own family?”

  Mick nodded without looking at me. “My father and my three brothers.”

  “They couldn’t make you kill someone, could they?”

  Mick shook his head. “They gave me two choices. They had Solrún and Jón. Either I killed them when we got back to the village or they killed me right there.”

  “Your brothers?”

  “My father.” Mick’s eyes flickered and he had an empty look in them.

  “Your dad killed you?”

  Mick nodded.

  “With my own knife. The one I failed to use on Solrún.”

  I took his hand in mine and he looked at me. I noticed a change in his eyes. The sparkling looked more like a small fire now. The fire of anger.

  “I can’t believe they would do that?”

  He sighed. “It was the only thing they could do. They couldn’t see that what they did was wrong. That was just the way it was.”

  “So did Solrún and Jón at least get to live?” I asked.

  “No. They were killed as well. I see them from time to time. They are very happy now.”

  We both sat still for a long time and stared at the snow hanging heavily on the tree branches in the garden.

  “There is one thing I don’t get,” I interrupted the silence a little later.

  Mick threw a pine cone he had found in the snow. It hit a few branches on a tree and made the snow fall from it to the ground.

  “What is that?”

  “You knew all this might happen when she came to you. Why didn’t you just make her marry you and avoid all these troubles?”

  “First of all, she was in love with someone else and she wasn’t going to go through with marrying me. I didn’t want a forced marriage. Second, I knew she wasn’t the right woman for me. I knew deep inside my heart that I was going to meet the love of my life one day and marry her,” he said and looked at me intensely.

  Then he picked up my hand and kissed it. I enjoyed seeing him smile again as he lifted his head and touched me gently on the cheek. I felt a chill spread all over my body.

  Then he added, “I just didn’t know that I had to die and then wait a hundred years before she would show up.”

  I had to laugh, but I felt really flattered. “How smooth,” I said and pulled my hand away.

  Then there was this awkward silence. “We’d better get back before someone notices we are gone,” I said.

  Mick agreed.

  We got up and started moving back toward the school. We had reached the entrance hall when suddenly someone flew toward us in a great hurry. It was the Cornwell twins. They looked agitated.

  “Have you heard?” they asked, both speaking at the same time.

&nb
sp; Mick and I looked at each other not understanding what was going on.

  “I do not believe we have,” Mick said.

  I shook my head.

  “They have found another one,” they shouted at the same time. “They found another screamer.”

  Chapter 8

  The buzz was all over school. Everybody was talking about the two women who woke up screaming and never stopped again. Wherever Mick and I went, someone was whispering in the corner or talking about it in Hornam Hall. This time it was an older woman who had taken a nap in the afternoon and woke up screaming. Raphael had arrived at her dormitory but had not been able to help her. So like last time, she had been sent to the hospital tower, where they tried to sedate her and make the screaming stop.

  “What causes them to scream?” I asked Mick when we sat down for dinner and he came out of the kitchen to join us at the table.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  I stared into his eyes and could tell that he was telling the truth. I knew him well enough to see that he really had no clue what this was.

  “Has it ever happened before?”

  He shook his head while eating a potato. “I have never heard of it before.”

  Abhik was sitting next to me and had not yet uttered a single word. Now he spoke. “I heard that it is like they are trapped in an ongoing nightmare. That is why they are screaming. They can’t wake up again,” he said and looked at Mick.

  Mick nodded. “I heard that too.”

  “What if it is some kind of evil that has been let into the school?” Abhik asked and stared around him. “What if it is right here in the hall with us?”

  “You mean an evil spirit like a Se’irim or a demon?” I asked.

  Abhik nodded while stuffing his mouth with cheese pizza. Abhik had been a cancer patient all of his life on earth so in the beginning at the school he had a hard time getting used to eating again, something that had been difficult for him on earth. But that seemed to have changed now.

  “But can they do that?” I asked Mick. “Can they really get in here?”

  Mick tried to smile comfortingly. But what came out of his mouth didn’t exactly serve to make anyone feel safer.

  “There is evil everywhere,” he said. “Satan will always try to destroy us, steal our happiness or, even worse, make us believe his lies. You saw what happened to Portia. She let evil into her heart. That is the only way it can enter the castle.”

  “So you do think it is something evil that causes them to scream?” Abhik said. His voice sounded a little shaken. His normally gentle and steady brown eyes were flickering nervously.

  Mick nodded. “It sure doesn’t come from anything good.”

  He had a point, I thought. It had to come from evil. So now we had two women caught in some sort of nightmare and a Pegasus with a burned message for me in his coat. Was there a connection between those things or were they merely coincidences? If there was, then the question remained in my head: did all these incidents have something to do with me? Was someone really after me?

  No one in our dormitory slept that night. We just lay in our beds and listened to the sounds of the castle being searched for intruders. Everyone was afraid to go to sleep, afraid that they might wake up screaming in a never-ending nightmare. Mrs. Higgins came to our dormitory the next morning to tell us they hadn’t found anything yet, but neither had there been any new incidents to report, so they assumed the school was safe for now.

  She looked at me. “You’d all better stay close to someone all the time. Never wander the corridors alone.” She said it like it was meant for everybody but I really felt like it was meant only for me. Her eyes were only on me.

  Throughout the day we got to feel just how serious this was. Security had been tightened everywhere we went. The entrance to Hornam Hall was now guarded by two Angels whom I hadn’t seen before. Rahmiel and Salathiel had called for assistance and the whole school was now filled with these beautiful giant creatures who lit up everywhere they went. I didn’t mind too much being near them since they always made me feel happy and peaceful, but I did mind the circumstances. They were here because we needed their protection. And they were armed. Big swords were hanging in their belts and I even saw one with a bow and arrow.

  Later on our way to The Art of Healing class we were all discussing how we wanted to get some of our many questions answered. Everybody in my class was scared. Even the Cornwell twins had almost lost their appetite, they declared. While Mai and Jackline seemed to take it coolly, Acacia and Nigel both had been pale and shaken all day.

  “We need to demand some answers,” Acacia said as we floated into the classroom and sat down at our desks. “They must know more than they are telling us. They have to.”

  “Raphael knows everything about this,” Nigel said. “He has been close to all the victims. He has got to tell us what is causing this.”

  Everyone agreed that we would start asking him our many questions as soon as he entered the classroom, but much to our big disappointment, it wasn’t Raphael who entered through the door when the bell rang. It was Mrs. Higgins, our history teacher.

  “Mrs. Higgins?” Nigel said with a shriek. ”What are you doing here in this classroom?”

  “Well, children,” she said with that high-pitched voice of hers while she forced a smile. “It seems that your Art of Healing teacher, Raphael, had other engagements to attend to today. He received an important message this morning and had to leave the castle for a couple of days.”

  “What?” yelled Nigel.

  A murmur burst out among us.

  Mrs. Higgins cleared her throat. “Yes, you heard me perfectly well, Nigel. Raphael will not be teaching this class today, I will. If you would be so kind and find your textbook, go to page 344.”

  The murmuring was back and Mrs. Higgins had a hard time getting through to any of us.

  “Children, children,” she said and clapped her hands.

  The murmuring stopped. All eyes were on her.

  “There is nothing to be alarmed about. Raphael is a very important Angel and he has to take care of other things than teaching this class from time to time. That is all there is to it. Now if you would just go to page 344 in your textbook.”

  Reluctantly we did as we were told, but I couldn’t escape that feeling in my stomach that something was very wrong. I don’t know if it was the way Mrs. Higgins looked at me or the squad of Angels that I felt was following me constantly wherever I went—the same squad that now guarded the classroom entrance and every now and then peeked in through the wall to check on us. Or maybe they were just checking on me? I didn’t know. Maybe I was just imagining things. Maybe all the students felt that way.

  But it scared me and at lunch I talked to Mick about it. “I feel like I am being watched wherever I go,” I whispered to him, when he sat next to me.

  He lifted his head and looked around. The three Angels that had been following me were standing by the wall. They were all looking in my direction.

  “You are just being paranoid,” Mick said and smiled at me. “I think we all feel like we are being watched these days.”

  “I think they are watching me more than others. It’s like everybody knows something that I don’t. It’s really creepy.”

  Mick raised one eyebrow at me. “So what if they are watching you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “What?” I had a hard time understanding where he was going with this. What was he saying?

  “You could choose to just be happy that someone is looking out for you, making sure you are safe. How is that a bad thing? It makes me really happy that you are safe. I would never forgive myself if anything happened to you. Nothing is going to separate me from you again.”

  I looked at him. “But,” I whispered as he stared into my eyes causing me to smile as well. “It makes it kind of impossible for me to be close to you. Like really close.”

  Mick smiled. “That is r
ight. I had not thought about it that way.”

  I felt his hand touch mine under the table.

  “We will just have to find other ways,” he whispered really close to my ear.

  I smiled and ate. I still loved the way the food just appeared on my plate, and it was always what I was craving right then. Just as I spoke to Mick, a bowl of chocolate ice cream appeared in front of me. I looked at Mick, knowing he was the one making it appear. How he always knew what I needed, I still didn’t understand, but it was really nice. Mick smiled and I felt a warmth spread inside of me, going through my whole body. I had to find a way to be alone with him later on.

  During my Transitions class I realized that maybe I wasn’t so paranoid after all. I wasn’t the only one assuming that I might be the main target of these attacks.

  “My money is on one of the elderly women again. They are so easy to scare,” I overheard someone say.

  I peeked to see Acacia, Nigel and the Cornwell twins with their heads together in a deep conversation. The subject was apparently on who would be the next victim.

  “Yeah. Or maybe it would be a guy this time,” Alexandra Cornwell said and looked at her brother maliciously. Frederic Cornwell replied by sticking his tongue out.

  “I think you might be right,” Acacia said. “The first two victims were women, so now it is probably a guy’s turn.”

  “Wouldn’t that be too obvious?” asked Nigel. “That is what you would expect, that now it would be a guy since the others were women, right?”

  They all nodded.

  “I think I know who is next,” Alexandra said and the four of them gulped while they shot a glance in my direction.

  From their expressions I could tell they didn’t know I could hear what they were saying until their eyes met mine and they all looked away quickly.

  The silence was almost painful.

  Chapter 9

  I watched the sun set over the forest from my window in the dormitory. As the stars became brighter in the sky, I realized I had been thinking about Jason again. I stared at the blank black window and the reflection of myself that wasn’t there. In a cruel way it reminded me why I couldn’t be with Jason. It was very simple really. I sighed and touched the window. It felt cold. It had been snowing again today, and the trees and landscape outside had been beautifully wrapped in the white cover.