The Afterlife series Box Set (Books 1-3) (17 page)

Then the opening in the floor turned into what looked like an open mouth. Like a burning crater, like a giant volcano with nothing but death and despair in it. I now realized the screaming came from that burning crater. It was an endless crying and screaming that burned its way into my heart and made me feel empty and hopeless. I fell to my knees. Rahmiel knelt next to me. With her mighty body she picked me up and held me in her arms. Meanwhile the spirit of the step-dad started falling into the burning crater. His face twisted in pain as he himself started screaming.

Then the floor closed and he was gone. The burning and the screaming stopped. Even the shadows had gone as well.

Jason’s mother hadn’t moved, but now she dropped the gun and ran toward Jason. She turned him around and wiped blood off his face. She wailed and it made my stomach turn. I loved him so much and I only wanted to help him. I wanted him not to get beaten. But it had happened anyway.

I got back on my feet and flew closer. As I did I heard a moan. It came from Jason. He was still alive!

Filled with such amazing joy inside, I turned to look at Rahmiel. She smiled her comforting smile. I felt like everything was going to be all right after all.

While his mother turned her back at us and started calling for an ambulance Jason even opened his eyes and looked at me. I was sure that I saw him smile behind that beaten-up face when I made myself visible for a second. I smiled at him and touched him gently.

“You will be all right now,” I whispered before I made myself invisible again.

Then I heard the mother call the police.

“I shot my husband,” she said.

I held Jason’s hand and sat next to him. The police were first on the scene; the paramedics followed quickly after. A paramedic declared the step-dad dead and the police started interrogating the mother about what had happened.

The paramedics examined Jason and his wounds before they put him on a stretcher. But Jason wouldn’t lie still. He kept looking at his mother while she was talking to the police and crying. That was when I realized why he was so worried. A second later she was put in handcuffs and two officers were escorting her out of the house.

Another officer approached Jason.

“I am sorry, son, but we have to take your mother in.”

Jason’s eyes became wide and filled with anxiety.

“But why? She saved my life!” he yelled.

“She has killed a man. She killed your stepfather and that needs to be investigated.”

“He was beating me … and her!”

“We still need to investigate if a crime has been committed. As I said, I am sorry, but that’s the way it is.”

Jason was now furious and tossing himself around on the stretcher.

“You can’t touch her! She was defending me!” he yelled with all of his strength. I tried to approach him, but his anger made it impossible.

Jason was carried out of the house on the stretcher while he was screaming at the police. I felt Rahmiel’s hand on my shoulder once again and I looked up.  “It is time to go,” she said.

I nodded and followed her back to the bathroom where we went through the mirror. Rahmiel didn’t say a word to me all the way back, not until I was in my bed again. Then she looked me deep in the eyes.

“You did something extremely brave but also very foolish today,” she said. “We will talk about it later. Now get some sleep.”

Then she kissed me on the forehead and as she left the room with her glowing body all the light in the room disappeared.

C
HAPTER 22

A
MONTH WENT BY
with exams and, to my own surprise, I was happy to learn that I passed with good marks. Even The Art of Transition went pretty well, not something Mrs. Ohayashi had expected either. After the exam she came out of the classroom into the hall where I was waiting to hear if I had passed or not. She looked at me with her narrow black eyes and said:

“Well, it seems as though we will be getting on each other’s nerves in Advanced Art of Transition next year as well.” And then she went back into the classroom and closed the door. 

“I guess so,” I mumbled happily while I went to see Mick in the kitchen.

“I passed all of my exams,” I said and hugged him.

“Now that is something to celebrate,” he said with a great smile.

He concentrated for a second while staring into my eyes and then he smiled again.

“You want strawberries dipped in chocolate, huh?”

I smiled again. “Those are my favorite.”

“Well, your wish is my command, my lady,” he said and bowed in front of me. Then he took a plate in his hand and looked at it intensely until the strawberries appeared a second later.

“So how have you been?” he asked while we ate.

“Up and down. Mostly concentrating on my exams.”

“What about the whole Jason story?”

I sighed. “I don’t know. I haven’t visited him since, so I have no idea how he is doing.”

“Why is that?”

“I feel like I’ve messed everything up. I mean I am happy that I saved his life, but … I don’t know.”

“What don’t you know?”

“I don’t know if it was a good thing or not.”

Mick nodded while putting another strawberry in his mouth. I did the same. It was so incredibly tasty.

“You probably won’t be able to visit him again,” he said. “Not through the mirror in the cellar at least.”

I stared at him. I hadn’t thought about that.

“Why?”

“The mirror was only set on his house because he was supposed to die. It was prepared for the spirits to go and get him.”

“So now it is closed?”

“Probably. Or set on someone else’s house.”

“But we didn’t go through a mirror when we went to get that woman in the hospital. We flew there.”

“It is only in the cases where people die in their own home that the Angels put up a portal through a mirror. Sometimes we have to travel all day to get to certain people, like we did.”

“Oh. So does that mean that there are more mirrors like this in this castle?”

He nodded. “Hundreds.”

“Wow.”

He smiled and nodded again.

“More strawberries?”

I shook my head.

“I have to go. Salathiel and Rahmiel want to see me in their chamber.”

“Well, take one for the road, then,” Mick said while holding out the plate in front of me.

I took one and kissed Mick on the cheek. He blushed. And so did I.

Salathiel and Rahmiel turned as I entered the room through the wooden door. It still left me out of breath, but I had definitely improved.

Rahmiel smiled and asked me to sit down in a huge leather chair. Their chamber was beautifully decorated with old leather furniture, lots of books, and a candle lighted on the table. It had a nice ambiance to it.

Salathiel sighed and sat on a chair in front of me.

My heart started beating faster and faster. An idea struck me. Were they going to kick me out of the school? Could they do that?

“What you did in the human world was a serious breach of our rules,” he said. “It is clearly stated that students cannot go outside the school area. It is too dangerous and you might cause trouble in that world of which you are not aware. Even the spiritual world’s very existence might be revealed to them. And that cannot happen. Later on, when you graduate from this Academy, visits to the human world will be allowed, but not until you fully understand the consequences it might cause to the people to whom you reveal yourself. Is that understood?”

I nodded anxiously.

“Nevertheless,” Salathiel continued with a more gentle tone. “We find your intentions and actions toward the human boy as honorable and filled with all the right motives.”

Rahmiel took over. “What Salathiel is saying is that you had the right intentions. You followed your heart and showed compassion for a human being. And that is a good thing. It is actually a great thing. When spirits or Angels visit the earth, it is to show the humans that we love them, that they are being cared for. And that was what you did for Jason.”

I nodded, a little less anxious.

“So what does that mean?” I asked. “Will I be punished?”

Salathiel and Rahmiel looked at each other. Then they laughed. I felt relieved. They didn’t seem to be angry with me.

“No, sweet child. No one will be punished for loving somebody,” Rahmiel said. “But you have to know that your actions have had great impact on Jason’s life on earth.”

I nodded. Then Rahmiel and Salathiel got up from their huge chairs and stood in front of me. I felt so small and insignificant.

“We need to show you something,” Rahmiel said and reached out her hand toward me. 

I took it.

The next thing I knew, we were flying in the air. And we were going faster than I had ever gone before. The two Angels held tightly onto my hands while they pulled me gently with them. We stopped in front of a house. It took me a couple of seconds before I realized that it was Jason’s. It was abandoned. Windows were broken, weeds had taken over the lawn and it looked dark and a little creepy.

“What happened?” I asked.

“They had to leave the house,” Rahmiel said.

“But where are they now? Where is Jason?”

Rahmiel and Salathiel grabbed my hands again and we soared into the air. They took me to the big city and into a small alley filled with garbage disposals and people sleeping on the ground.

“What are we doing here?” I asked, rather nervous about the answer. This was not a nice neighborhood. Homeless people slept on the ground with all their belongings in plastic bags next to them.

Rahmiel sighed and then she pointed at one of the homeless people. It was a young man sitting on the ground.

“It’s okay. You can go closer,” she said and pointed again.

I approached him as my heart beat faster. Could it really be? Was it him? I looked closer and recognized Jason. He was dirty, his clothes ripped. He stared straight into thin air, like he was paralyzed.

“What’s wrong with him?” I asked.

“Well, his mother was sentenced two years in jail for killing her husband, so Jason had no one to take care of him. The bank took the house to pay for all the hospital bills for Jason’s recovery. He was left with nothing. Now he lives on the street.”

I stood directly in front of him and looked into his eyes. I made myself visible to him and waited for him to recognize me, but he didn’t even see me. He stared right through me.

“Jason?” I said gently.

No answer.

“What’s wrong with his eyes?”

Rahmiel sighed again.

“He is high. He started doing drugs a couple of months ago when someone gave him some cocaine. Now all he does all day is look for the next fix. He begs for money during the day and spends it on drugs at the night.”

I felt like I had been punched in my stomach. A tear slipped from my eye. Was this all my fault?

“But why?”

Rahmiel shook her head. “I don’t know, sweetheart.”

I knelt in front of him.

“Jason, please hear me. Please let me help you out of this.”

He still didn’t answer or even look at me.

“Why won’t he listen?” I asked.

I felt Rahmiel’s hand on my shoulder. “He can’t see you anymore. When they took his mother and put her in jail his heart became hard as stone. He is so filled with hatred and anger that he is no longer able to see or hear you.”

“But … that is so cruel!”

Rahmiel wrapped both of her long arms around me and made me feel like a little girl again. “I know, sweetheart. I know.”

“Will he ever be able to see me again?”

“Oh, he might, if he manages to get out of the drugs and anger. If his heart opens up and is filled with love again, he will be able to see,” Salathiel said.

“Can’t we help him? Can I help him?”

“He needs to ask for our help. We can’t do anything if he doesn’t ask God for help. So for now he is on his own.”

“May I visit him again?”

“Yes. We have decided that you will be allowed to visit him as often as you wish,” Rahmiel said.

I looked at her with determined eyes. I felt all this had happened to Jason because of me, because I had meddled in his life. He was supposed to have died; now his destiny was changed. The way it was now, he would have been better off dead. But I was not going to leave him sitting there. I was determined to help him get back to life.

“Then I will come every day. One day he will see me and then he will ask for my help,” I said. I turned and looked at Jason. His brown eyes seemed lifeless but somewhere underneath was the boy I loved. He was still alive.

He had to be. He just had to be.

THE END of book #1 in the Afterlife series

S
ERENITY

AFTERLIFE #2

C
HAPTER 1