Beyond (Afterlife Book 1)

 

CHAPTER 1

HOW DO I SAY THIS? Well, the thing is … I am a spirit. Before you close this book because you don’t believe in a life after death, just take a deep breath and listen to my story. It might be interesting to you. You might want to know that death is only the beginning of the next great adventure. I know I would have liked to have known that when I was still alive.

Maybe you do believe that there is an afterlife, maybe you have even seen us, or at least seen what we can do. Either way I am sure you will enjoy my story. Before I begin we need to get the facts straight. In the world of the supernatural, we make distinctions between spirits. Some are like me—Ru’ach, as we are called here, which is Hebrew meaning “the wind of man” or “the spirit of man.” As a Ru’ach I am a part of the Spiritual Realm, which is just as real as the Natural Realm.

Those who are still human in flesh and blood just can’t see it. I can go wherever I want, do what I want, and even talk to whomever I want, including humans. Then there are the Se’irims, which means “hairy beings.” You can call them demons if you prefer. They are the evil spirits that ascend from Hell and walk the earth just like us, but they make bad things happen to people and make them feel guilty and depressed.

How did I get to be a spirit? Well, I really don’t know. I guess I died in some sort of way. By the way, my name is Meghan and I am sixteen years old, or at least I was when I died. As I just said, I don’t know how I died, just that I did. I woke up on a steamboat. That is my earliest memory of anything. It is not that we forget everything when we die; we remember a lot of different stuff from when we used to be alive, but we don’t remember the people we used to love or who used to love us.

Also specific things and details about our life go away as well. But that is only to protect us, they say, so we won’t miss our family too much. It is just in the beginning. They want us to focus on our new life, not the old one. Eventually when we finish our education and training at the Academy, they open our file and we get the memory back and, best of all, we get to visit the people we love and protect them. Before you start wondering, yes, we do look just like humans.

Actually we are just as we were before we died. I have been told that the spirit leaves the body exactly two seconds before the physical body dies. So we have the faces we used to have and we do wear clothes, the same ones we had on the day we died. If you were to see us, you would actually have to get really close to see that we are not humans. But when you do you will realize that we have no body of flesh and bones and blood veins. We are nearly weightless, we weigh only 21 grams, which is kind of cool and very fun.

We are not pearly white as you would think; we have all of our color on our clothes, on our skin, and in our eyes. It’s hard to explain exactly how we look because we do have hands and feet and stuff, but it’s just not like humans have it. We are made of a soft fluid-like material. Anyway, back to my story. You can probably imagine the surprise I got when I opened my eyes and found myself standing by the railing with several people next to me whom I had never seen before.

And boy, what a shock I got when I looked down and saw that the moving steamboat – with a big paddle wheel on its back – was in fact, flying through the thin air. Underneath us, there wasn’t any water, only mountaintops. I have always been afraid of heights, so I tried to grab on to the person standing next to me. But that was before I knew anything about who I was—or rather had become.

The person next to me was an adult and a spirit as well, so I just went right through her body with a plunging sound, like we were both made of water. We both fell to the wooden deck. She wore a big hat with a flower in and a puffy dress. Her face seemed stiff, maybe because of the fall. While lying on the floor, she spoke to me first.

“For crying out loud, get out of me,” she said. I realized what had happened. I had jumped inside of her, so to speak. Our skin and bodies could bend and move like they were made of some fluid. And that leads us to another of your many questions. Yes, Ru’achs can feel something. I can feel it when people touch me most times—and I definitely felt it when I jumped inside that lady. It didn’t hurt, though. It just felt strange and weird and a little clammy.

The woman next to me told me to calm down when we got back on our feet. I was naturally frozen with fear.
“Who are you?” I asked. The woman chuckled.
“Now where are my manners?” she said and reached out her hand. I took it in order to shake it, not knowing what else to do, but my hand just went straight through hers making that plunging sound again. She looked at me and then at her hand.

“Well, yes, you will need to work on that,” she said and pulled back her hand. She talked with a high-pitched, annoyingly old-fashioned voice.
“I haven’t introduced myself. My name is Penelope Higgins. That is Mrs. Higgins to you. I am a teacher at the Academy of the Spiritual Realm.”
Imagine my surprise.
“The what?”

“Academy of the Spiritual Realm,” she repeated, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, which is of course it wasn’t. It was supernatural like the rest.
“Oh yes that’s right, you don’t know anything yet. You just got on the boat.”
“Why am I on a boat?”
She leaned toward me and whispered. “You are dead.”
“I am what?”

“I am sorry to be the one to tell you, but you are dead. Now you are a Ru’ach, or a spirit if you prefer the more earthly term for it. You are going off to the Academy where all spirits go when they have just left the world of the living and entered our world. This is where we teach you how to live your new life.”

“What? I … I mean … how …?” I asked very confused and slightly panicking.
“Well, you did come a little unexpectedly,” she said and looked at me as if the cat had brought me in. Then she smiled a kind of weird and scary smile.
“We will make room for you at the Academy, I am sure. They will know you are on your way.”

“How did I even get here?”
“How does anyone get anywhere these days?” She chuckled. Then she stared at me. “I guess you died,” she said.
I shook my head not believing a word of what she was telling me. How could this be?
“But … what about my parents? Where are my parents? They will be worried if they don’t know where I am.”

At least that was what I thought, because in the same second I realized that I didn’t even remember my parents. All I remembered was that I had a mom and a dad and that they usually worried about me. Mrs. Higgins sighed and shook her head.
“They will not be worrying about you, trust me.” Then she stared at me in an observing way. “Do you mean to say that you actually still remember your parents?”

I thought hard about them but couldn’t recall a face or a picture or anything. But I knew in my heart that they were there.
“Well, not really. I can’t picture their faces or anything, but I kind of remember … I don’t know what it is. It is like a feeling or something …” Mrs. Higgins snorted.
“That is highly unusual,” she said. “Well maybe it will wear off eventually.”

I looked at the kids standing next to me, looking down at the landscape floating by underneath us. One was a chubby little boy; next to him was a just-as-chubby girl looking almost exactly like him. I guessed they were brother and sister, as I later found out to be the truth. Not only that, they were twins. They had red blood stains on their clothes and glass splinters in their faces. When they realized I was staring at them, they both stuck their tongues out.

“This is Frederic and Alexandra Cornwell,” Mrs. Higgins said. “They will be in the same class as you. They got on the boat a few hours ago.” Then she turned toward me and whispered. “Car accident, they told me.” My eyes widened. Then I looked down at myself. I was wearing ordinary clothes: jeans, a top, and a small jacket. I had dressed nicely the day I died, I was happy to see. And I had no blood on me. I felt my head and there were no bruises or glass or anything that indicated it had been a violent death.

“At least they know how they died,” I mumbled and dared to stare down for a short second. Mountaintops and valleys with rivers, forests with pine trees and small lakes floated past beneath me. Then we came to a stop. It was like a dock, but placed between two clouds. Here more people got on the boat. Kids were hanging out by the railing and talking, while others were hanging their heads out the windows from the restaurant inside.
Then there was a loud sound, as the big paddle wheel started turning again and steam from the engine drifted over the heads of the people standing on the top deck. Soon the boat was off again.

Everything seemed so blurry and strange. I was leaning on a red railing and if I reached out and touched it my hand went right through. But I still managed to lean on it without falling through. I didn’t understand how that was possible. But again none of it seemed to be possible. The guy standing next to the fat twins leaned over and said, “It’s the only thing they remember.”

I looked at him. He seemed to be about my age. He was tall, kind of cute-looking with his blue eyes and blond hair. His clothes seemed very old-fashioned. He wore nice grey pants and a white shirt with a silk vest and some sort of black wide tie underneath his jacket. He was very elegant but looked like he had stepped right out of an old movie. A movie about rich people, that is. He wore gloves and held a black hat between his hands.

“Hi, I am Mick,” he said and shook my hand. This time I managed to grab on to it for a few seconds. It felt funny because our hands went right through but I still felt his handshake. It was a tickling feeling.
“Hi, Mick. I am Meghan … at least I used to be.”
“It is scary the first time, right?” He asked and looked down. We had passed the mountains now and the boat was flying over the ocean. I just nodded.“Wh

at did you mean by ‘It is the only thing they remember’?”
“Well, most people don’t remember anything when they have just died. But some have such a traumatic death that they will remember just that moment when they died, such as a car accident or a plane crash.” I looked at him skeptically. “How do you know all this?” He smiled. He had a nice smile.

“I have been dead for a long time.”
“How long is that?”
“Almost a hundred years. That is in earthly years. Times goes faster here in the Spiritual Realm so that is more like three hundred years.” A hundred years? I was stunned. That was an incredible long time. Around six times as long as I had been alive.

“I know it sounds like a lot, but I am really just very new here compared to others who have been here for thousands of years.”
“So why are you going to the Academy if you already know everything?” I asked him. He shook his head, still smiling a little arrogantly. I didn’t like that much, but I really liked him. I was very attracted to him in a weird way. Like we knew each other from somewhere or were spiritually connected. I don’t know what it was; I just immediately felt comfortable in his presence.

“I am not a student at the Academy; I am the cook. I prepare food for the students.”
He didn’t strike me as a cook. As a matter of fact he looked like he had never been in a kitchen or done manual labor of any kind. He was much too aristocratic in his appearance.
“You’ve been dead for nearly a hundred years?” I asked, kind of blown off.
He nodded. “Yes.” I tried to smile and nod. This was very weird and hard for me to take in. I still thought about the opportunity that I might be dreaming.

That was the only solution I could come up with right now. 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.