Authors: Brian Mercer
Aftersight (16 page)
****
When we reached the sitting room where Orientation was held, most of the class was already there. The parlor was located somewhere above the front entrance. Its windows overlooked the brick-paved front drive and the tunnel of elms leading to the school's main gate. The rain had stopped but the sky was still painted with dark grey clouds.
There were plenty of reading chairs and sofas for people to sit but no desks. For a school, Waltham was very unschool-like. It felt more like someone's home than a house of learning. I took a seat on a couch between Nicole and Sara. There were about a dozen students in our class, four boys and the rest girls. I guess women were more in touch with their intuitive sides than men.
Next to me, Sara counted our classmates. "...eleven, twelve,
thirteen.
This
can't
be all of us. Thirteen's not a proper number, is it? Bad luck, right?"
We exchanged glances and I shrugged. "It'll probably be okay."
The boy with the long bangs that I'd seen earlier that morning in the luncheon hall was leaning against the wall of windows, talking to a tall, spindly girl in her early twenties. The girl had pointed, foreign-looking features that made me think of the willowy ballet dancers from the Bolshoi that I'd seen two seasons ago, when they'd performed in New York.
The two were standing awfully close to each other, their faces almost touching, whispering conspiratorially. Then, as if sensing they were being watched, they both looked across the room at me. I locked eyes with the girl and smiled but she didn't react. Then the boy whispered something in her ear and she giggled into her hand.
"That guy's starting to get on my nerves," I whispered.
"I see that you're all here," Sir Alex said, strolling into the room with the familiar thump of his silver-tipped walking stick. "I want you all to meet Mrs. Apple, if you haven't already."
Mrs. Apple walked in behind him and it occurred to me that I'd never met anyone so appropriately named. Perhaps five feet tall in her clunky, tan pumps, Mrs. Apple was round and plump, her vivid red hair way too bright for a woman who must be well into her seventies. When she smiled, her brilliant red lipstick made an impression on the back of my retina that would linger for days.
"Oh, and there's a parcel of bright, cheerful faces if ever I saw 'em," Mrs. Apple observed in a thick, nearly unintelligible Scottish brogue.
"Mrs. Apple will be your teacher and primary advisor," Sir Alex explained. "As you might guess, the range of talents in this room varies broadly, and while we can develop a curriculum that will accommodate most everyone, each one of you will require specialized attention, either by instructors at the academy or by senior students who have some experience with the same abilities as yours."
Mrs. Apple introduced herself as a friend of the Waltham family who'd been an instructor here for as long as the school had been open. Her mediumistic abilities started as she was a teenager, when she channeled an aunt who'd recently died. Mrs. Apple had been writing a letter to a friend when her arm took off on its own and began writing out several lines in her great aunt's hand. Shivers trickled down my back as she fleshed out the details of her experience. It made me think of my own handwriting change and my mysterious new artistic abilities, which, like Mrs. Apple's automatic writing, weren't consciously directed. The idea that I was somehow lending my body to unseen spirits made me feel dirty and I vowed to ask Mrs. Apple about it as soon as I had a chance.
Next we took turns introducing ourselves to the class. The disheveled boy from the lunchroom was Jean Paul, who had grown up on the outskirts of Paris. His French accent and broken English were irritatingly endearing.
The girl next to him was Malina, a Romanian immigrant who, until recently, lived in London and worked in a department store on Oxford Street. She was serious and dramatic and when, during her remarks, we'd made eye contact, her eyes traveled up and down me disapprovingly. I sensed her attraction to Jean Paul â
felt it
, really â and knew she considered me a threat. Her aloof affectation made me squirm.
Nigel, Sara's little friend, was from Bexley, a suburb south of London. Then there was Ravi, a young man from India; Johanna, a sable-skinned girl from South Africa; Mindy, an Asian woman from Hong Kong whose real first name, she explained, was usually mangled by western tongues. Next was Pedro, a swarthy youth in his twenties from Argentina whose thick mustache seemed to operate independently from his face; Liza, a blond-haired, blue-eyed Swede; and finally Arika, the oldest of our class, maybe in her late forties. Dark-skinned and dark-eyed, with tattoos dotting her sun-baked face, she was an Australian aborigine who revealed cryptically that she was a Dream Walker.
In all, a fascinating crew. I looked forward to getting to know them all better, with the exception maybe of Malina.
Sir Alex, who'd been seated on the arm of a reading chair, his cane propped in front of him, made his way into the center of the room, where he waited until the various quiet conversations petered out.
"Many think of the afterlife as a place one travels to after we die," he said. "But it isn't a place. The afterlife is all around is. Bits and pieces of it are flitting about, invisibly, every moment of every day, like radio broadcasts. All of you are like very sensitive radio receivers, with the ability to tune into these broadcasts. What we teach here is how to function with these abilities, not so that you can control them but so you can
d
i
rect
them, for healing, for growth, to help others. None of us is here as a result of chance. Always remember, the gifts themselves are unimportant. It's what you do with them that counts."
Cali
South Parlor, Waltham Manor
Orientation
There it was again. That feeling of overwhelming familiarity.
All morning Waltham had been tripping off déjà vu after déjà vu in my head. Eerie corkscrews of energy would wind up my back and send tingles shivering down my arms. But when Sir Alex started to give his speech, it hit me with a solid electric jolt, memories from my out-of-body experiences, me lounging with a group of strangers of different races and ages, listening to a lecture in a setting exactly like this. That's why everything had felt so familiar. I
had
done it all before!
The realization choked off my ability to speak, to swallow, to breathe. I wanted to shout everything I knew and was experiencing but was paralyzed by the flood of information, and pure knowing, coming at me too fast to take in, let alone talk about. I put my hand to my chest, trying to take in air.
This is what suffocating is like!
Nicole looked at me with sudden concern, sensing I was in trouble. Just when it seemed I was going to pass out, I took a deep breath, then a second, then a third. Whatever had been clogging the pipes had cleared. All systems were equalizing. I caught Sir Alex's eye. He seemed to know what was happening but only nodded, as if to say I'd be all right.
"Ooh-kay, everybody, we are gonna lairn our first energy exercise," Mrs. Apple said, standing without a change to the elevation of her head. "We're gonna lairn to ground."
"What?" I heard someone whisper. "What did she say?"
"We're going to learn to ground," someone answered.
Mrs. Apple paired us up. She put Becky together with Ravi, a dark-skinned, panda-shaped Indian man in his mid-twenties, with a round head and large ears that stuck out from his face like the handles of an urn. Sara grasped Nigel's hand, as if knowing already who she belonged to. Still slightly dazed, I moved unthinking toward Nicole, sure we'd be put together.
"Noo, Cali." Mrs. Apple held up her hand. "You are with Arika."
Before I knew it I was standing face to face with the butt-ugly Australian aborigine woman. Her mug was so gruesome she was making me tear up. We were exactly the same height, so that I was looking directly into her wild, slightly maniacal black eyes. Her nose was broad and flat and she had tiny square tattoos fanning out over the backs of her hands and across her tanned, leathery face. Tribal custom or personal statement? Arika had told everyone she was a Dream Walker. I wanted to ask her what that meant but something in her eyes flipping creeped me out.
Mrs. Apple told everyone to take turns giving our partner a playful shove. Next to me, Nigel pushed Sara hard enough to make her stumble back. Something about the crinkle in her forehead and the hurt look in her eyes made me chuckle. When Sara shoved him back, it was with equal force. I thought for a minute that they were going to tangle.
I was turning my attention back to Arika when I felt two small, hard hands drive into my breasts with tremendous force. I fell back, knocked off my feet and back onto my butt. The crash was spectacular, shaking end tables and toppling knickknacks. Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at me. I felt my face flush hot enough to produce a second-degree burn.
"A wee,
gentle
push," Mrs. Apple told everyone, but I wasn't thinking wee,
ge
n
tle
, when I shoved Arika back. But she was ready for me and merely smiled a big, toothy grin and took a step or two back, still on her feet.
Next Mrs. Apple asked us to visualize what she called a "grounding cord." She wanted us to imagine a pipe growing from the base of our spines and stretching all the way to the center of the Earth. I immediately felt different as the make-believe pipe drilled into the planet's core. Some of my anger seemed to ease up just then, as if swallowed by Earth's gravity. It was like a soft pull downward, like I was growing roots.
After that we took turns pushing each other again. Arika seemed intent on knocking me on the floor a second time, but like all my classmates, I only swayed in place. My feet never left the floor.
Very strange.
"When a lot of energy is comin' at ya," Mrs. Apple said, "groundin' is one way to keep your head on straight."
Cali
Waltham Manor
January 29
I stumbled through the dimly lit hallway, my arms folded against the predawn cold. I was following a member of the waitstaff, a girl who walked ahead of me with a flashlight. Spidery shadows crawled across the walls on account of the constantly moving light. It, combined with the hollow feeling in my stomach, brought on by sleep deprivation, insomnia, and hunger, made me feel empty and insubstantial, like I was a ghost moving through an endless tunnel. I shivered.
"Five o'clock in the morning!" I'd exclaimed the night before, when I first checked out my class schedule. "Okay, wait a minute. This
can't
be right."
It hadn't been a misprint: Astral Projection Basics, North Recess, 5:00 a.m.
I peeked at the other girls' schedules. They all had early sessions, too: a shared meditation class before breakfast at seven-thirty every morning. But only I would have to get up at 4:45 a.m. in time to get to the North Recess. Then I read the margin notes:
Avoid food and beverages b
e
fore class.
"Are you flippin' kidding me? Not even coffee?"
The flashlight girl, her starched white pinafore outlining her black uniform, paused at a closed door, knocked twice, then opened it without waiting for an answer. The room on the other side was softly lit, warmed by a crackling fire from an ornately tiled fireplace. Like most rooms at Waltham, it was furnished with antiques, in this case by a glut of chaise lounges.
Flashlight Girl curtsied and closed the door behind her, leaving me alone, blinking sleepily. Three dimly lit figures stood near the fireplace, two tall men and a squat matronly figure whose shape was unmistakable
. This can't be happening.
"Mornin' there!" Arika all but yelled, bounding across the room with a bow-legged step that was more waddle than walk. "You ready for class?"
"Shhh, quiet," I said, wincing. "I can hear you without all the shouting."
"What's this?" Arika asked, grasping my lip ring and tugging on it like a fisherman hooking a fish. "You ain't got any use for this. It'll just bog you down."
I jerked back, running my tongue along the inside of my mouth. "It's too flippin' early for this."
"Ah, Cali, so good of you to come," said one of the figures by the fire. Sir Alex stepped out of the shadows to the familiar tap of his cane. "I must apologize for the earliness of the hour, but this is the best time for this sort of thing. Let me introduce you to your instructor. This fine chap is Robert, an advanced student here at Waltham Academy. He will be leading you through the basics of astral projection these next many months."
Robert, a tall, wiry man with wavy blond hair and a close-cropped beard, stepped forward and offered his hand. "Pleased to meet you. Cali, is it?"
"You're American."
"Canadian, actually. From Ottawa."
"Canadian. Really." I thought about Derek and my aborted attempt to run away to Vancouver. "I was almost Canadian once." I yawned musically. "I'm sorry. It's jetlag and noisy neighbors banging around upstairs at all hours. My body doesn't know what time it is. Why's this class so early, anyway? No way to move it to a time when I might actually be awake?"
"Well, we don't want you awake, necessarily," Robert answered. "Not too awake, anyway. Not for this class. The ideal state for learning astral projection is a mind awake, body asleep state. But, we'll get to all that soon enough."
From behind, Arika began singing in a mumbly, incoherent language. I glanced back at her, unable to suppress a sneer. "Where are all the other students? We can't be the only ones, can we?"
"You are the only two in your class with this particular talent," Sir Alex said.
"We have a group of more advanced students," Robert explained, "who meet a few doors down every morning and project into the astral planes. Once you two master the basics, you'll join them."