Beyond (Afterlife book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

on the
boat?
    Later, during lunch break I sneaked into
the kitchen and found Mick. He sat in the window smoking a
cigarette.
    “ Are you allowed to do
that here?” I asked.
    Mick smiled. He threw the cigarette out
the window. “What could happen? Are you afraid I would
die?”
    That made me laugh. “I guess
not.”
    I climbed on the kitchen table and looked
out the giant window he was sitting in. The view of the ocean
beneath the castle and the mighty cliffs made me dizzy.
    “ What is it?” Mick
asked.
    I swallowed a lump in my throat. “I am
afraid of heights,” I said.
    Now it was Mick’s turn to laugh out loud. I
smiled too.
    “ I know. Crazy isn’t it? I mean
I can’t remember my parents or the people that I love, but I do
remember that I’m afraid of heights.” I said.
    He looked at me intensely with his blue
eyes. They became like small cracks when he smiled. Then he made a
very elegant movement with his arm and spoke. “In the Afterlife
there is absolutely nothing to be afraid of. You have to let go of
all your earthly fears.”
    He was right; I knew that. Our teachers
had been saying the same thing over and over again all morning.
This was a big part of why they needed this Academy, to get people
to think like spirits and not like humans.
    “ Is there really nothing
to be afraid of here?”
    I saw the expression in Mick’s eyes
change.
    “ There is something, isn’t
there?” I asked.
    Mick floated away from the window and into
the kitchen, turning his back at me.
    “ What is it?”
    He sighed and turned to look at me.“It is
not my job to educate you; ask your teachers,” he said, for the
first time being a little dismissive toward me.
    “ Our teacher already told
us there are demons and Se’irims. Can they harm us?”
    Mick remained quiet. I jumped down from
the window and walked closer to him, trying to catch his blue eyes
and look into them.
    “ They can!” I yelled.
“How?”
    He shook his head heavily.
    “ You have to ask someone
else about that,” Mick said without looking at me. “I am busy. It
is lunchtime, as you know.”
    I looked at the kitchen table in front of
him. It was empty. Not a vegetable or a piece of meat in sight. And
lunch was about to begin in the hall. The lunch bell had already
been ringing. Several hundred Ru’achs waited for food to arrive on
their plates. And not just any food, the food they each
individually wanted right now. All their favorite dishes. I looked
forward to seeing how Mick did this.
    Then the oddest thing happened. He closed
his eyes and rubbed his hands together. I stared with big eyes as
smoke seemed to emerge from his hands. I began to feel concerned
that something was very wrong.
    Then I saw it. The smoke slowly floated
through the air into Hornam Hall where I now heard cheering and
laughter. I ran and peeked through the door. As the smoke filled
the hall and touched the plates, food of all kinds emerged on each
of them. Exotic Asian food for some, meat and potatoes for others,
even burgers and fries for those who loved that.
    I went back to Mick in the kitchen. He was
still concentrating.
    “ So that is how you do
it,” I said.
    “ Mmm…” he answered.
    I must say I was impressed to put it
mildly.
    “ It’s all in our
heads?”
    Mick stopped and looked at me. He seemed a
little exhausted. “The food is there all right,” he said. “But it
is not like the food on earth. The fact is that we don’t really
need food as spirits, but we do enjoy eating. That is one thing we
bring from earth, and since we are meant to be enjoying our lives
here, food plays a big part of that.”
    “ So you make some kind of
illusion that we are having food?”
    He nodded again. “You can call it that,
yes. Most of the students know it by now. They tell you in the
second year.”
    “ What about sleeping? I
slept last night and had a strange dream. Do we really need
sleep?”
    “ No. We think need our
sleep, just like we think we need food and other