The Afterlife Series Box Set

  John nodded pensively. “We have thought about it several times, but she hasn’t been in any state where she was able to see us.”

  “I think she is doing better.”

  “It sounds like a great idea. But how?” asked Mandy

  “I want you to come to her in a dream. Tell her that you are doing great, that you love her. She needs to hear that.”

  Mandy sighed. “I have tried it once, but both my dad and I are horrible at catching dreams.”

  “Well I am good at it,” I said. “I will do it for you.”

  Chapter 24

  “Are you sure that you don’t want me to come with you?” Mick asked as we were about to leave the kitchen. He pulled me aside. “I have done this a lot of times before.”

  I looked at him and sighed. “I don’t think that is such a great idea.”

  “You have been out of class for more than a week. You are out of training. You weren’t even there when they were shown how to open a dream. All you know is to catch it.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I talked to Abhik yesterday. I asked him about it because I was concerned that you might be in over your head.”

  “So you have been talking to others about me, but not to me?”

  “I didn’t think you wanted to see me again.”

  I swallowed hard. He was right. I had no idea what to do after I had caught the dream. I hadn’t thought it through at all. I felt confused. I really didn’t want to spend any time with Mick. Not when I hadn’t told him. How could I? He would be so angry afterwards when I finally told him—angry that I kept it a secret from him. But I couldn’t tell him now. Not standing in the kitchen on our way out through the door with two people present whom we hardly knew. It just wasn’t the right time. I wanted to get this dream thing done as soon as possible. Rosey needed it, and so did I.

  “Mick… ” I sighed. “I really don’t think … It’s just not a good idea.”

  Mick grabbed my arm and held on to it. I was suddenly scared that he knew already. Did Rahmiel tell him? Could he maybe tell by the size of my abdomen?

  “Meghan. I know you are still upset about what happened. So am I. And I am sorry. But don’t let it out on Rosey or her family. I really think you should let me go with you and help you with the dream. I am very good at it.”

  I sighed deeply. I couldn’t see any way out of this. I really needed him there. “All right,” I said. “I guess we are all going.”

  The silence hung awkwardly between Mick and me as the four of us flew toward the psychiatric hospital. I felt nauseous and couldn’t quite figure out if maybe morning sickness had arrived or if this whole situation made me sick to my stomach. Maybe it was flying again after my accident. I wasn’t even sure if I was supposed to be flying this far so close to getting out of the hospital. The doctor had told me to stay calm and get enough rest. This wasn’t exactly obeying doctor’s orders.

  “So how have you been?” Mick asked after a while.

  Is he trying to break the silence or is he really interested? I asked myself. Should I tell him how I had been? Should I just tell him everything?

  “I heard you were in the hospital”

  “Oh, so you do know about that?” I asked sarcastically.

  “I couldn’t help but hear about it. Everyone was talking about the girl who went back eight years in time. You broke all records. You know that, right? Not to mention all laws of physics.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. “I guess people have been talking about that.”

  “Oh yes, they have.”

  I avoided looking at him but focused on my flying. I didn’t want him to see how disappointed I was that he hadn’t visited me at the hospital. But even though he didn’t see it, he knew me too well.

  “So I guess I should have visited you while you were in there,” he said with humility.

  I shrugged while still not looking at him. “I didn’t need you. We are no longer together. You have no obligations to me whatsoever.”

  “Wow. Now I know I really should have come,” he said. “I am sorry. I just thought you needed the space. You have no idea how worried I was for you, but I honestly thought you didn’t want to see me again. Ever.”

  Now I turned my head and looked at him. “Well I don’t. I don’t need you.”

  “I hate myself for what happened that night. You must know that. I loathe myself. If I could go back and change it, I would.” He looked at me like he wanted my forgiveness. I wasn’t ready to give him that yet.

  I sighed indifferently. His remark was ironic, given the latest events in my life, but I wasn’t going to go back in time and change what happened. We had created a life and even though the circumstances weren’t at all like I wanted them to be, I was pregnant and that child shouldn’t suffer the fate of not being born just because we were idiots. This whole situation was a mess, but at least something good would come out of it.

  “What’s done is done,” I said and turned my head to focus on what was ahead of us. I hadn’t come any closer to figuring out how to tell Mick, but I wasn’t going to do it now. I didn’t feel ready for it. Some part of me didn’t want to see him happy. This baby was all he wanted. He wanted a family so badly. And now I was about to give it to him because he had acted like that. It was about to drive me crazy.

  Soon the white buildings of the psychiatric hospital were beneath us. I saw Mandy stop and hesitate in the air. I grabbed her hand. “It will be all right,” I said as reassuringly as I could.

  “I know,” she said and smiled at me. “It has just been so long …”

  “She still thinks of you every moment of the day.”

  “So do I … think of her, that is.”

  “Have you prepared what you will say to her?”

  Amanda’s dad came to her and put his arm around her shoulder. “Are you okay?” he asked. She nodded. “I’m actually looking forward to seeing her. I just hope we will succeed.”

  “I was just telling Amanda that it’s important you prepare what you are going to tell her when you go to her.”

  “How long do we have?”

  “To her it will seem like a long time, but in reality it will only be a few seconds, so think about what’s important for you to tell her and prepare a few lines,” Mick interrupted us.

  John and Amanda looked at each other and smiled. “I think we are ready,” John said.

  “Then let’s do it,” I said and started descending toward the roof of the hospital.

  Rosey was already asleep as we entered her room through the roof. The family picture was still in her hand. She had fallen asleep while thinking of them. That was perfect. That way she would wake up thinking she had dreamed about them because she was thinking about them just before she went to bed.

  “So what do we do now?” whispered John.

  “You just get ready. Meghan will catch the dream and I will open it for you so you can jump in,” Mick said.

  I flew toward Rosey lying in her bed. Quickly I spotted her dream. It was hiding next to Rosey’s right ear. “It is so small,” I whispered.

  “That’s probably because she has just fallen asleep,” Mick said. “But size doesn’t matter. Just try to catch it.”

  Remembering my childhood lizards again, I reached out and grabbed the dream before it managed to realize what was happening. It started moving around in my hands and it tickled, but I managed to hold on to it. It was yellow and very bright.

  “It is a good one,” Mick said when I showed it to him. “Shouldn’t give us much trouble. Nice catch by the way.”

  “So what do you do now?” I asked and looked at the small bubble. In it I spotted Rosey walking in a yard. She seemed happy. That was good.

  “I need you to hold onto it, while I poke a hole into it with this.” Mick took out a thin sewing needle from his pocket. “Once I have done that, the two of you jump into the hole as fast as you can. We cannot have it open too long or other things will enter it too and it will go
bad, filling Rosey with bad emotions and make her state of mind even worse. This is a hole into her mind and soul. We have to be careful what we let in.”

  Mick lifted the needle high in the air and with great speed poked it straight through the bubble. A hissing sound filled the room, like air running out of a balloon. “Hurry up,” he said.

  John and Amanda jumped toward the hole and soon their bodies oozed into the bubble. When they were inside, Mick closed the hole temporarely by putting his hand over it.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “Now we wait.”

  We watched the bubble and soon we saw Amanda and John appear in the yard as well. Rosey stopped and stared at them. Then she ran toward them with her arms wide open. All three hugged and cried. We couldn’t hear anything, other than a mumbling far away, as if people were talking in a room next door.

  A beautiful scene filled the bubble. They were talking, hugging and kissing each other, and by the look on Rosey’s face in the bed, she really enjoyed it. She was smiling and crying, but for once they were tears of happiness. I felt warm and had tears in my eyes as well from the love being shown here. This was really touching.

  “When do we have to get them out?” I whispered to Mick.

  He looked at the bubble for a moment, then back at me. “We have to get them out soon. The color has started to change.”

  I looked closely at the bubble and realized he was right. It was beginning to have an orange color to it.

  “If it gets red we have to pull them out immediately,” he continued.

  “Like put your hand in and take them out?”

  Mick nodded. “It could get messy.”

  “It is beginning to get a little muggy now,” I said.

  “That’s bad,” he said and studied it closer.

  A sort of fog inside the bubble made it unclear and hard for us to see what was going on.

  “What do we do?” I asked.

  “I need to get them out,” Mick said. He lifted his hand from the hole and put it inside. It was a little unclear what went on, but as far as I could see he grabbed John and pulled him out, then he went back and grabbed Amanda. As he pulled her out, the bubble turned dark red and strange noises came out of the hole in the top.

  “How do we close it?” I yelled.

  Mick took out the needle again and started closing the hole by sewing it back together with straight, neat stitches. I was shaking as I saw how Rosey’s face became anguished. She moaned and tossed in her bed. The fog slowly became lighter but the bubble was still dark red.

  “Hurry up,” I said to Mick.

  While he was sewing I suddenly saw something inside of Rosey’s dream. Something that made time stand still and caused me to drop the bubble. Apparently Rosey was now having a nightmare. In the dream she was bent over a dead body. She was crying and screaming. But it wasn’t her daughter or her husband’s body she was leaning over.

  It was mine.

  Chapter 25

  All I could hear was my own breath. Heavy and fast at once. As the bubble started falling toward the ground I heard screaming and yelling in the distance as well. But it seemed so far away. Like had it been a movie that had nothing to do with me. In slow motion I saw Mick throw himself toward the floor and catch the bubble before it landed.

  “Meghan!” I heard him yell when he had carefully put the dream bubble back by Rosey’s ear. But it was like he was in a bubble himself. Or maybe I was. I couldn’t tell. I lifted my head and saw him move in front of me. His face was angry. “What were you thinking?” he yelled. But I never answered. I had completely withdrawn into my own world. I no longer cared about Rosey or her dream.

  “Meghan!” Mick grabbed my shoulder and shook me. Finally I looked at him. “What is wrong with you?” he said.

  I stood motionless for a long time, before I looked at Mandy and John who were standing behind him. “I … I … I,” I stuttered. Then I stopped. I couldn’t tell them what I had just seen. How could I?

  “She has been under a lot of stress lately,” Mick said to Amanda and John. “She just got out of the hospital a few days ago. Maybe this was just too much for her.”

  “Let’s help her get back,” John said.

  I felt John and Mick grab my arms and lift me into the air. After a while I told them I was fine and able to fly on my own, so they let go of me, but Mick kept close. I felt him staring at me all the way back to the castle, but I didn’t pay any attention. Right now I didn’t care about him, the baby, Jason, or anything.

  As we got back, Mick wanted me to go to bed and get some rest, but I refused. “I’m fine,” I kept stating, but he wasn’t convinced.

  “Shouldn’t you at least go and talk to the doctor or one of the nurses at the hospital tower?” he asked with concern.

  “Mick. I am fine. I just need to talk to someone,” I said and stormed past him.

  I went to see Rahmiel in her chamber. As always, she welcomed me with a glowing smile. She asked me to sit in one of her huge armchairs with red velvet upholstery and legs of gold.

  “So what is going on?” she asked.

  “I need to ask you about something.”

  Rahmiel nodded pensively while staring at me. “I know,” she said. “I have been waiting for this moment.”

  I closed my eyes briefly. Of course she knew everything. She and Salathiel had planned it all along. But why?

  “Is Rosey my killer?”

  Rahmiel smiled and it annoyed me. If she knew everything, why didn’t she just tell me?

  “We wanted you to get to know her first.”

  “What?”

  “You are wondering why we didn’t just tell you. Well, how do you think you would have reacted if we did?”

  It felt like I had fire inside of me. The thought of me spending all this time with Rosey and taking care of her, trying to help her get some peace of mind before she died made everything inside of me boil. “I would hate her.”

  “Exactly. That wouldn’t do either of you any good now, would it?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t see …”

  Rahmiel interrupted me. “Now I am not asking you to see with your eyes nor to understand. I am asking you to use what you have in here,” she said and pointed a huge forefinger at my chest. “What does your heart tell you?”

  I was confused and angry and had no time for her mind games. “I don’t care about my heart. I am angry. Angry at you and Salathiel for setting me up like this. Angry at Rosey for killing me. I don’t want to care for her. I want to hate her.”

  Rahmiel kept smiling. “That is only very natural.”

  “Yes it is,” I snorted.

  “There is nothing wrong with feeling angry every once in a while, as long as you don’t stay angry.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Anger will destroy you.” Rahmiel leaned back in her chair. “Look at what it did to Rosey. She was so angry because her daughter and husband were killed that she started hating everything. She hated the killer for doing this, she hated God for letting it happen, but most of all she hated herself for not being able to protect her family. But it didn’t do her any good. It only led her to do bad things. She let all the anger out on the world and went into a world of her own. She has been in that prison of hatred and guilt for eight years now.”

  The worst part was that I felt for her. I still felt badly for Rosey for what she had been through. But she had also killed me and for that I wanted her to suffer.

  “But she is a killer. She killed me.”

  “Yes, but now that you know her, you know her story. If you look into your heart you know you care for her still.”

  I grumbled. She was right. “But I am still angry.”

  “You are allowed to be. But don’t let it take root inside of you. Rosey is still your assignment and it is not over yet.”

  I widened my eyes. “Are you kidding me? Am I supposed to help my own killer get into Heaven?”

  Rahmiel nodded. “Tha
t is your assignment, yes.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  Rahmiel smiled again. “I think you can.”

  “Maybe, but I won’t. She killed me, so I let the Se’irims take her.” I crossed my arms in front of my chest and felt like a stubborn child. But I wasn’t being stubborn, I was just really mad at everybody. And I felt it was my right to be so.

  As I stared at Rahmiel and felt the anger rise inside of me, I suddenly realized something horrible. I was the one who had saved Rosey from dying eight years ago. So in some way had I sealed my own death sentence? If I hadn’t saved her life, she would have died. She wouldn’t have gone insane and killed me.

  I felt anger and tears piling up in my eyes. I felt so confused by everything. I couldn’t figure it out any more. Who was to blame for what and why?

  “You will figure it out eventually,” Rahmiel said and put a hand on my shoulder.

  “But … I don’t know what to do.”

  “I am not going to tell you what to do,” Rahmiel said. “But know this. You are her only way. Her fate is in your hands. If you don’t go and get her when she dies, she will never come here and be with her family.”

  “But that would mean I had to forgive her! She is a killer. She doesn’t belong here!”

  Rahmiel shrugged. “Who is to say who belongs here and who doesn’t?”

  I sighed heavily. “Why did she kill me? Did she kill others as well?”

  Rahmiel shrugged again. “I think you should ask her about that yourself.”

  I shook my head. “I am never going to see her again. You are trying to make me understand, and I don’t think I want to. I believe my parents don’t even know where I am because my body was never found. She has caused so much pain. Years of pain to my parents. She destroyed my family like someone destroyed hers. I don’t think she would forgive her daughter’s killer even if you asked her to.”

  “That will be my problem once she gets here. You don’t need to worry about that.”

  I shook my head. Thoughts were flickering through my head so fast it caused me to have a headache. I kept thinking about my parents and the many years they had been searching for me now. I was looking forward to getting my file so I could go and find them and maybe show myself in a dream. They deserved peace of mind if anyone did.