Mick came closer and put his hand on my shoulder. He squeezed it and I actually felt it.
“Don’t worry, Meghan, you will learn fast enough,” he said. “Everyone has a hard time the first few days, but just be yourself, and you will be fine.”
Be myself? I thought. How was I supposed to do that when I didn’t remember who I was or used to be or … whatever.
If I was anything, I certainly wasn’t myself right now.
Chapter 2
The boat slowed and finally stopped at a small harbor with no other boats in sight. I followed the others and pushed my way out. Now I stood on a dark platform. Strangely, I felt neither warm nor cold. I couldn’t feel the wind even though I could tell it was blowing in the treetops. And when I lifted my hand to feel it, it was as though the wind blew through it while the tips of my fingers seemed to dissolve, like the wind had removed them. But as I lowered my hand, it looked the same as before.
“New students this way,” a voice called in the distance. I followed the line of people toward a lamp. A tall man with a big beard held it suspended on a stick between his hands as he called.
“I need all new students to follow me.”
We followed the tall guy down what seemed to be a steep, narrow path. While we were walking as humans normally do, the tall guy seemed to be floating a few inches above the ground.
The people around me looked as scared and confused as I felt on the inside, not knowing where we were, where we were going, or even where we came from. I felt a strange emptiness inside, but I guess not knowing your past or even who you really are will do that to you.
The darkness on both sides of us gave me the impression we were going through a forest with big trees. No one spoke a word. The chubby twins walked right in front of me. The boy sniffed a few times and then the girl did the exact same thing a second later.
“I’ll get you all nice and settled in at the Academy in just a few minutes,” the man with the lamp said. “It is just around the corner.”
The path turned and we stopped in awe of the sight before us.
“Ooohhhh,” a young girl next to me said.
“Cool,” said a boy looking to be a few years older than me.
The path ended at a big marshland with beautiful flowers and high grass. Perched on a high cliff we saw a giant castle with more than a hundred high towers reaching to the sky. It appeared to be made of white marble. White clouds and beautiful rainbows surrounded the castle. I was quite stunned by the beauty.
“Come on,” the tall man said as he found another narrow path through the waist-high grass. I stared at the castle in front of us and couldn’t help feeling a little excited. Was this the Academy? Was I going to live there? I didn’t know much about where I came from or what my old school was like, but I knew it didn’t look like this.
Everyone was silent during the walk through the marshland. I stared up at the great castle in front of me. And so did everyone else. Maybe they were all as surprised and overwhelmed as I was. Maybe it was just that we didn’t have anything to talk about since we didn’t remember much.
When we reached the foot of the high cliff, we saw stairs carved into the wall, all the way up to the castle. It seemed like an endless walk but I never felt tired. As we climbed, we heard noise coming from above, like laughing and chattering from a big crowd of people. I looked up and saw people floating over our heads, reaching the castle from the air. They talked and laughed as though they had known each other for years. We all stopped and stared at the crowd. I recognized a few of them from the boat. Mick was one of them. He waved at me.
“Soon you will be floating in the air like them,” the tall man said. “One of the advantages of being a spirit is that you don’t need stairs.”
As we climbed the last stone steps, we crowded in front of a huge oak door. The bearded man raised the stick he used to carry the lamp and knocked at the castle door.
“Normally we just go right through,” he said and smiled, “but since you haven’t quite learned how to go through doors yet, we do it the old-fashioned way.”
The door swung open at once as if someone had been waiting behind it.
A bright light shone in front of us, as bright as the sun. It came from a fair and incredibly beautiful woman with long blond braids and crystal-blue eyes. Her height was much taller than a normal earthly woman. She wore a long white dress and floated like many other people we had seen. She looked at us with affection in her eyes. I remember feeling so exceedingly loved at that moment.
“New ones, my lady,” the tall man said.
“I will take them from here,” she said with a gentle, almost singing voice. She was alluring. I felt so close to her. Like I had known her all my life.
She pulled the door wide open and we entered a hall as big as a house with white marble floors and white marble walls holding burning torches. Magnificent paintings covered the ceilings like in an old cathedral and the stained glass windows rose from floor to ceiling.
Never have I seen anything this beautiful, I thought. But then I remembered that I actually didn’t know if I had.
“Come with me,” the woman in white said with a smile. “I am Rahmiel.”
We followed Rahmiel across the white marbled floor. As we passed chambers and other hallways I was certain I heard voices coming from everywhere. Happy voices and people laughing. And I couldn’t help but feel cheerful inside. Something about this place made me happy.
Rahmiel led us into an empty chamber.
“Welcome to the Academy of the Spiritual Realm,” Rahmiel said. A man suddenly streamed through the marble wall behind her and glided through the room with a great smile. He had long white hair and a long white beard to match. He was as big as Rahmiel and wore a white robe. He smiled at Rahmiel.
“This is Salathiel. He is the headmaster at the Academy. He will fill you in on what you need to know.”
Salathiel cleared his throat and looked at us with another big smile. He too had a strange bright light surrounding him.
“So these are the new ones. Well, welcome all of you. I know it is a difficult time for you right now and there is a lot you don’t understand. But I ask you please to wait with your questions until later. You will get a lot of them answered the coming days when you begin your education. This is a whole new life that is beginning for you; we call it the Afterlife, and we hope you will enjoy your stay here. It is our job to train you and educate you so when you leave this Academy you will know all there is to know about the Afterlife. It is much different from being a human, as you will soon learn. First of all we will be sorting you in different groups.”
Salathiel and Rahmiel began to sort us into our classes. We were quite a mixed group, I now realized. There were forty-five elderly people, twenty-two adults, a couple of children around eight or nine, and fifteen kids aged twelve to eighteen. Rahmiel put all us teens in the same group. I recognized the twins with the broken glass in their faces. A young Indian boy wearing a hospital gown, named Abhik, was bald and extremely skinny. Another girl about my age seemed angry and hostile toward everything. She looked around with mad green eyes, hissing at people who came too close to her. Her name, I later learned, was Portia.
“Now that everybody has found a group, it is time to get the gala started.” Salathiel looked excitedly at the crowd. “Dinner is served in Hornam Hall.”
Chapter 3
As we walked in a line, I felt like a kid on her first day of school. We went through the marbled hallway again and further into the castle.
“Try not to get lost in here,” Salathiel said while leading us in the right direction. “This castle has two hundred wings and, as you can see, there are no staircases leading to the wings. We don’t need them, since we can fly. To help newcomers like you, we have put up some ladders you can climb until you learn how to fly.
"However, if you do get lost just find one of the bells.” Salathiel pointed at a bell hanging in the air next to the marble wall. “This
is a special kind of bell, not only because it moves around the castle, but because once you grab it, it will know your motives for doing so. And if you’re not ringing it because you are in trouble, it will not call for help but will do something else.”
“What will it do, then?” asked a badly bruised adult man who I guessed died in some kind of fight.
“That I cannot tell you. Just never do it. Only ring the bell if you need help, and help will arrive.”
We entered Hornam Hall through a huge open wooden doorway. It was magnificent: high ceilings with beautiful paintings; marble floors and walls; hundreds of round wooden tables where people were sitting with their gold plates and silver knives and forks. At the end of the hall, an orchestra of violinists filled the air with the most enchanting music.
When we entered, the music and chatting stopped and all the faces turned toward us. Hundreds of eyes looked at us as we walked inside the hall, as if they were all waiting for us.
Salathiel pointed at the empty round table right in the middle of the room, set with an astonishing bouquet of flowers. Rahmiel came up behind us.
“This is where we sit,” she said. “For the first dinner at the Academy, you join us at the table in the middle.”
Feeling awkward because of all the staring eyes, I followed the others toward the table in the center of the hall. There were exactly enough plates and chairs to fit us all, including Salathiel and Rahmiel. When we stood behind our chairs, Salathiel clapped his hands.
“This is a day of celebration as The Academy of the Spiritual Realm welcomes our newest members,” he said out loud while motioning in our direction.
Then everybody in the room started cheering and clapping. The uplifting sound made me feel good about myself, although a little shy as well.
“Let’s eat.” He signaled that we could all sit down.
The food was amazing. A taste of Heaven, as Salathiel called it while winking at me. And it seemed to appear out of nowhere. The more I ate, the more emerged on the plate. Not only was it my favorite dishes, it was also exactly what I wanted in this exact moment, as if someone knew my innermost cravings. I looked at the other plates on the table only to realize that no two plates had the same food.
Happily, I realized I was still able to taste the food. That sense hadn’t disappeared when I died.
“The great thing is you will never have to worry about calories again,” I heard a woman about forty say to two other women.
And then they laughed. It was the first time I heard anyone among us newcomers laugh. It made me smile as well. Rahmiel smiled at me, causing me to feel an extreme inner peace. How she did that I didn’t understand at all. But she was like everyone’s mother, always smiling, making us feel loved and at peace.
Then the dessert came: ice cream and brownies as big as books.
While eating dessert, I suddenly saw Mick. He shook hands with some friends, chatted for awhile with some others before he came toward our table. I smiled and felt a little twitter in my heart. I hoped he had come to talk with me. But he went straight to Rahmiel and kissed the back of her hand while bowing in front of her.
“My lady,” he said.
“My dear Mick,” she replied with a warm smile.
“Do you find everything to your satisfaction?” he asked.
“As always.”
Then I was happy to see that he turned to me and came closer. He whispered in my ear. “So you like the food?”
I nodded excitedly. “It’s the best I’ve ever tasted,” I said with my mouth full.
“That’s what I thought,” he said with a little smile.
“Did you make this?”
He nodded. “I did.”
“Wow, you are good. How did you know what I like?”
“Call it intuition,” he said and winked at me.
What’s all that about? Why does everybody keep winking at me? I thought to myself. Did they have some kind of secret they thought I knew about? I didn't get it.
Soon the twins who sat next to me began to fight. Mrs. Higgins had said their names were Frederic and Alexandra Cornwell. They had been gulping down food for almost an hour straight now and still they kept eating. I realized the plates were designed to never be emptied. But even though the two had all they could possibly eat, they still both wanted the same doughnut that at some point had fallen off one of their plates. And now they eagerly debated to whom it belonged.
“It was mine,” Frederic said while picking up the doughnut with his fat little fingers.
Alexandra stabbed her fork in his hand thinking it would hurt him. But as it went straight through him, it only made him laugh in her face.
”Ha!” he said.
The fork trick had probably worked while they were growing up, but now everything was different. Frederic opened his mouth and ate the doughnut while Alexandra argued.
“It was mine, you know!”
“Now it is mine,” Frederic said with his mouth filled, deliberately showing his sister the half-chewed doughnut in his mouth.
“I hate you!” Alexandra screamed. She threw her fork on her plate and crossed her arms in front of her.
To my surprise, Mick suddenly intervened. He stuck his head down between the two and tried to calm them.
“I think I might be able to fix your little problem,” he said.
They both looked at him, obviously not believing him.
“See, I am the cook in this fine establishment.”
Alexandra looked at him with a little more interest.
Then he stretched out his arms and flipped his hands. When he turned them, a doughnut even bigger than the first one emerged between his hands. Frederic’s eyes were huge with envy as Alexandra smiled and took it, looking back at her brother triumphantly.
Mick looked at me and smiled. I clapped my hands discreetly at him. Then as I turned my head, my eyes stopped at Abhik who sat across from me. He sat with his head bowed and had barely touched his food. I stared at him until I heard Mick whisper from behind me. “It is not polite to stare.”
I moved my head. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to,” I whispered. “It is just that all the rest of us are eating like we never had food before and that boy is only sticking his fork into it but not even putting it in his mouth.”
“Abhik has been a cancer patient most of his life. He is not used to having an appetite or eating that much. But he will be. We need to give him some time to get accustomed to the fact that he can actually eat and that he will never have to feel sick again. These things take time.”
Just as Mick finished his words Salathiel raised his glass high in the air and made a toast.
“To our new students,” he said.
“To our new students,” the entire hall replied.
After dinner we followed Salathiel and Rahmiel out of the big hall. They soared into the air and we followed them climbing a long ladder.
I was surprised to be feeling so sleepy. I didn’t even know if spirits slept. But then again I didn’t think they ate, and I had been proved wrong.
We found our beds in one of the towers. Four other girls shared my room: Portia, who was also an American girl like me; Acacia from Greece; Mai from China; and Jackline from Uganda. The old-fashioned beds surrounded with velvet curtains were so soft, unlike any bed I had ever slept on. Wondering what they were made of I pulled up the sheet and realized the bed was in fact floating above the floor. I reached down and touched what looked like the mattress and realized the bed was actually a cloud. We were sleeping on soft and fluffy clouds.
Being as tired as I was, I didn’t pay any attention to the girls chattering. I fell into a deep sleep almost immediately.
I had an odd dream that night. Some people who I thought were my parents were searching everywhere for me. I couldn’t see their faces but knew it must have been them. They were desperate and worried. I wanted to tell them that I was all right, they shouldn’t be worried about me anymore, and that I was dead, but it wasn’t so
bad. But I couldn’t.
I woke up sweating and shaking. Once I realized it had just been a dream I rolled over and fell asleep again, but the next day I couldn’t stop thinking about the dream. What if it was true? What if my parents didn’t know what had happened to me?
Chapter 4
I was late for my first class. The story of my life, I thought, and apparently also of my death. I woke up late and the other girls were already gone. I climbed down the ladder and then had no idea where to go from there. The hallways were quiet and there was no one to ask for directions. So I tried to walk the same hallway I thought I remembered we took the night before, but I was wrong. I ended up in a dead end with a door on the right.
I entered it and stood in a huge chamber. In the middle on a giant table of stone sat a huge open book. I went to it and looked at the pages filled with pictures of humans. The first one showed an elderly woman lying on her deathbed. The more I stared at the picture, the more I realized that she was in fact moving, exhaling what seemed to be her last breath. The woman’s chest was elevated while the spirit quietly oozed out of her body and looked down at her. Suddenly the woman was not alone. Two spirits came through the walls in the room and took her spirit by the hand. Together the three of them disappeared through the wall and the lifeless body stayed behind.
I stood motionless and stared at the picture for a long time. Then as I flipped through the book, I realized all the pages were filled with pictures just like this one. And in every one of them someone was dying. I flipped twenty pages or so and saw a woman on an operating table in a hospital. I flipped a couple more and saw a young man, no more than seventeen or eighteen, lying on the floor in a pool of blood. Someone was standing next to him. It made my heart race. The man raised a baseball bat and hit the boy with it. Then he did it again and again; the body just lay there lifeless. My eyes filled with tears. How could anyone do something that cruel?