The Afterlife series Box Set (Books 1-3) (52 page)

“But Mick …”

Mick reached out and grabbed me by the waist. Then he started kissing my throat and chest. “Stop it,” I said.

He lifted his head and looked me into my eyes. “No. This is
my
right.” I gasped as he threw me to the ground and started undressing me. “Stop it Mick,” I pleaded. “Please stop it. You are not being yourself!” Mick didn’t stop; instead he forced himself on me.

“What is the matter with you?” I cried. “It is like you are someone completely different.” A part of me wanted to fight him with all I had, and knowing how strong I had become, I knew I could. But there was another part of me that hesitated and didn’t want to fight him. I felt guilty for all I had put Mick through and somehow I felt like I owed this to him. I knew it was wrong, but I let him anyway. I gave it to him. I gave myself to him.

When he was done and I got my clothes back on, the remorse began. He stared at me with fear in his eyes. The fear of how I was going to react. The fear of losing me. “I am so sorry,” he said. “I am so so sorry. This was not how it was meant to happen. This was never my intention.” He hid his face in his hands. “What is wrong with me? I don’t know what is happening to me.” Then he looked at me with red eyes. “Sometimes it is like I don’t even recognize myself any longer. I don’t know who I am or what I am going to do.”

I stopped him. I was very determined and I didn’t want to hear it. “Let’s just say that we are even now. I don’t owe you anything anymore.”

“But … Meghan!”

I didn’t wait for the rest. I turned my back on him and left.

C
HAPTER 19

I
FELT ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
when I woke the next morning. I was like an empty shell. I wasn’t sad, I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t even angry with Mick. If I did feel anything, then I felt sorry for him. I knew he was in a horrible state right now. He was beating himself up for having done what he did, for having forced this, for having destroyed something that could have been beautiful. And so he should be. But that was his problem. I was done feeling guilty about him; I was done trying to make everything up to him. In some way, I felt liberated. I felt free for the first time in a long time. Free from guilt and condemnation. Free to do what I wanted to do. Free to love who I wanted to.

I didn’t see Mick at breakfast, but I didn’t look for him either. I ate my food in a hurry before I went to the library. I wanted to borrow a book on time travel. I had gone back more than three minutes in time the day before; now I wanted to do more. I wanted to be able to go back even farther.

Myrna, the school librarian, showed me to an aisle with books with titles like
When Destination Isn’t a Place, But a New Way of Seeing Things
,
and
Time Travel—An Impossible Dream? Six Steps to Faster Flying and Getting Closer to the Speed of Light
,
and
Breaking the Light Barrier: A Dream for the Few.
I ended up taking them all plus one called
A Journey of a Thousand Years Must Begin with a Single Step.

“You should try this one instead.” I suddenly heard a voice behind me. I turned and looked into the friendly smiling eyes of Professor Albert Einstein. He took another book from the shelf. It had his picture on the cover and was called
Why I Was Wrong:
The Distinction between Past, Present, and Future as a Stubbornly Persistent Illusion
.

I smiled back and took the book as he handed it to me. “I am not sure that you will find what you are looking for in it, though,” he said.

I stared at him while I tried to balance the stack of books. “Why not?”

“Because all you will find in these books are the opinions of people who think they are experts discussing time travel. But these are no more experts than you, my dear.” He pointed at me. “You are the real expert here. You have actually tried it. Those so-called experts have not. Believe me. I am one of them, and I have never done it. I only speculate about it. You know more than any of us.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I don’t even know if I can do it again. I have to know more.”

“Of course you do. You want to do more, you want to go even further back in time, am I right?”

“Yes you are.”

Einstein took the books out of my hand and put them on the table next to Myrna. “We won’t be needing these after all,” he said to her. Myrna looked quite dissatisfied with his decision and the prospect of having to put all the books back by herself, but the professor didn’t notice. Instead he looked at me. “You will not find your answers in those books, I am afraid. We need to take more drastic measures. We must approach this in a scientific manner. But first I have something I must show you. It is of great importance. Let’s go for a fly.”

“But I have class …”

“Never mind about that. I will talk to Salathiel. It will be just fine.”

I had no idea where he was taking me but I followed him outside and up into the air. He seemed to be talking to himself a lot as we flew. I kept wondering if he was talking to me and a few times I tried to listen, but he was mumbling so softly it was really hard to understand. Eventually I decided that if he wanted to talk to me he would have to do so loud and clear. Instead I enjoyed the beautiful flight. It was still early in the morning and nature hadn’t quite awakened yet. Everything was calm; not a wind or a leaf moved and only a few birds sang like they were looking forward to this day with all its beauty and new challenges.

Finally Professor Einstein spoke out loud so I could hear him. “See, Meghan, the thing is that not many spirits have been able to do what you have done, and the few that have were not able to take it. Your gift is very rare, but also difficult and it can be hard on the soul.”

“What do you mean?” I asked thoughtfully. I had a feeling where this was going and it scared me a little.

“You have heard about Benjamin Harris, right?”

I shook my head while we passed a flock of birds. “No. I can’t say I have.” I thought hard for awhile but had never heard that name before.

“Benjamin went to your school twenty five years ago and he was the first ever to go back in time. He went back fifteen minutes, which had never been done before.”

I nodded remembering what Professor Grangé had told us in class some months ago. “Yes. I heard about that.”

“Very well then. Many years later Peter Parson came. He was a student at the Academy four years ago and on his final day of exam, he went back six seconds.”

I nodded again. “I heard about that too.”

“Very well. But I am sure no one told you the rest of their story.” He looked at me with his friendly smile. “Am I right?”

I swallowed hard. Had something happened to them that I didn’t know of? Was I to be afraid of this? Would it happen to me as well? “You are right,” I said with my heart in my throat.

He nodded content. “I thought so. Well I will try to make it short, but the thing is that these two other students, who had the same gift as you, they wanted to do more, just like you. They wanted to try again and again and go further back in time. See, Angels go back and forth in time constantly. They move on a completely different level than we do. And being able to travel in time is something that makes us closer to being like the Angels. Many spirits dream of becoming as wonderful and powerful as the Angels, and some come extremely close. Like you. You can do a lot of the things that Angels do. But the big difference between you and the Angels is that you have a human soul. You have a human nature, a human flesh. And being human, you often want more than you can handle.”

I tried to follow and believed that I understood where he was going. “So what did these other spirits do?”

Professor Albert Einstein sighed. “They got caught up in themselves, so to speak. Blinded by power. Then they got caught in time. And that is where they are now.”

It had gotten colder, I just realized, and when I looked down I saw icebergs underneath me in the almost white and sometimes icy ocean.

“Where are we?” I asked. My shoulders became icy. I tried to wipe it off.

“Antarctica—or South Pole, if you prefer.”

That was a first, I thought and stared at the beautiful white but desolate landscape underneath me. “What are we doing here?”

“This is where you will find them.”

“Find who?”

He turned his head and smiled at me; it seemed a little forced and he never answered my question. He looked like he was searching for something. Then he stopped. “It should be here somewhere.”

He floated a little further until we came close to a huge glacier as big as a mountain. I followed him into a long narrow crack inside of it. To my surprise we ended up in a cave. He stopped and landed on the ice. I followed him closely. The cave was open on top where sunlight came in and made sort of a spotlight in the middle, where I noticed something. It looked like two ice blocks. As we came closer, I felt like my body froze. Everything inside of me turned to stone. Inside of the blocks I could see two frozen faces. They both had their mouths opened like they had been frozen in the middle of a scream. My heart was racing.

“What is this? Who are they?”

Einstein sighed deeply. “I come here every now and then and every time I hope they have escaped. But nothing has happened yet, I am afraid.”

“Is this Benjamin Harris and Peter Parson?” I asked.

Professor Albert Einstein nodded. “I am afraid so, my dear.”

“What happened to them?”

“They froze in time. Their bodies became frozen. I tried to put them somewhere warm to begin with but that didn’t help and it was hard to find a deserted area with no people. So I chose this place instead. Sometimes I chop off some of the ice to make the block smaller, but it is always the same when I return. The fluid in their bodies is completely stiff and we haven’t found a way to thaw it.”

“But how … why?”

“They became obsessed with time travel. They kept going back and forth in time. Only by a few minutes and seconds, but because they tried to improve their time again and again without taking breaks, eventually they somehow managed to freeze time. And themselves.” Einstein touched the ice with the palm of his hand. “I have no idea how to get them out of there.”

“But what about Salathiel or Rahmiel or another Angel. Can’t they help them?”

“I am afraid not. See, Benjamin and Peter became greedy, they thought too highly of themselves and thought that they could be stronger and more powerful than the Angels. They became obsessed and they didn’t listen as Salathiel and Rahmiel warned them that this would happen. Instead they listened to the wrong voices and let evil emotions devour them from the inside. It became like poison in their minds. They were jealous of the Angels and wanted to be as good as them. Eventually the poison weakened their hearts. And you know what happens to a weak heart. It becomes a way for Satan to enter. And once that happens, Angels can’t help you any longer. You become unreachable.”

I swallowed hard again. This was quite the eye opener to me. I had to be careful. “How … How do I avoid this from happening to me?”

“I am no expert in that area, but I do know that you have to proceed with caution. You cannot ignore this gift that has been given to you. But you must guard your heart. Be careful what you think.”

When we left the ice blocks in the glacier I looked back one more time at the tormented faces.
What went on inside of them?
I kept thinking.
Were their minds frozen as well? Or were they aware of what was going on outside of the ice block, but just couldn’t tell us?
It was really scary and I suddenly had the deepest respect for my new ability. It was not something I could toy with. It was only to be used with caution.

But even after seeing this, I was still determined to know more. I wanted to know what I was doing and I wanted to be able to use it, to handle it—maybe even more than ever. I needed to control this so it wouldn’t control me. When we left the glacier and Antarctica with all its ice and coldness, Professor Einstein spoke to me again.

 “I am not saying you cannot use your ability to fly back in time,” he said. “By all means I want you to explore it. I am just telling you to be careful. Don’t do it for the wrong reasons.”

“I get that now, thanks. But what I really want to know is how can I control it? How do I—say—go back in time and reach a certain date, for example.”

 Einstein smiled at me. “Now that my dear is something I think you and I should work on. With my measuring instruments and scientific skills and your ability to fly fast, I am sure we can find a way.” He turned his head and looked at me. “Do you have a specific date in mind?

“I want to go eight years back in earthly time. To November fourth.”

C
HAPTER 20

O
N OUR WAY BACK
we stopped at the old airport where Professor Grangé had taken us the day before. Here I practiced flying for a couple of hours on the runway. Professor Einstein told me he wanted to see me in action to better put together a training program suited for me. He needed to know my weak spots, so we could improve them. I felt like an athlete trying out for a team. He kept pushing me in all kinds of tests and wrote a lot down on his notepad. He did a lot of measuring on my body and seemed very focused and in his own world all afternoon.

When the sun slowly went down over the ocean we finally stopped. Feeling exhausted from a long day, we flew the last miles back to the castle.

“Now I have something to work with,” he said. “I will meet you back here first thing in the morning.”

“But what about my school?”

Professor Einstein stopped in the middle of the air and looked at me. “This is far more important than your education. This is bigger than any of us. Salathiel will understand that. We need to get it right this time. We had two other students slip through our fingers and I will not let that happen again. I will not allow it.” He sighed before he continued. “I will talk to Salathiel about it. He will understand how important this is to all of us.”