Beyond The World [ chapter 1 ] -part 4-

Part 4

Oliver thought it was a little weird that she invited Tyler over to her house. It’s not like he’s in the same niche as her, and they rarely talk to each other. Nevertheless, Oliver was well aware that they had some sort of ‘history’ before.

‘Well, be careful. You know her stories.’ He said over to Tyler. After he saw the male in front him nodded, he reached for his backpack, fumbling each corner and pulled out his mp3 player. Then he set his backpack on an empty chair beside him.

As he plugged the earphone into his ears, he saw Sarah and Tyler were talking, and their mouths were moving, but he couldn’t listen to what they’ve said. A few moments after that, he saw Mr. Barnes was standing at the front door, his arms crossed and his eyes were like eagle watching his students, afraid they would somehow blow the library. Once he called Seth over to him and gave him a 5 minutes lecture for goofing around instead of doing what he said. Oliver sat lower, covering his face with the book to hide him using the earphone from his teacher.

He shifted his gaze from his book to outside the window, where he could see the sky slowly turning gloomy and weird masses of clouds were taking over the sun’s place. The wind suddenly got wild and shook the trees out there vigorously, threatening to pull out every single vines they could find. Birds were scampering in all direction, looking for shelter and Oliver saw a big raven steadily landed on a branch outside the window, its eyes were locked towards him.

It seemed like there was a storm coming, but Oliver could tell that it wouldn’t happen. It was almost similar to the thing happened at the time he went with his yacht club for 2 days to sail about a year ago. The sign of storm was there, but there wasn’t a drop of water around. But it made all the compasses turned crazy, spinning in all direction. And the communication system was disturbed, which caused his short voyage to be longer than scheduled.

Now he suddenly realised that the raven still watching him, and he watched back. He scrutinised the bird, before the raven’s eyes suddenly shone bright red, like the colour of ruby. ‘Um…Sarah, check out the raven out there. Doesn’t it seem kind of weird?’ Oliver said without even looking at her.

Sarah peered from her book, looking at where Oliver was watching. She stared outside, before she said, ‘what raven? I don’t see any.’ She turned at him to see that Oliver looked perplexed, his eyes never blinked. It was as if he was under some state of magic, and Sarah knew that the direction he was staring at wasn’t the trees or raven outside, but something else, which wasn’t there.

‘Oliver, Oliver!’ She snapped her finger right in front of his face, causing him to flinch and he almost fell from his chair. ‘W-what…’ He blinked twice, before he realised that he was staring at an empty branch outside the window. His earphone dropped down onto his laps and he didn’t bother to put them back on. The trees and wind looked fine, and the creepy clouds weren’t there like he saw earlier. He shut his eyes close and let out a heavy sigh.

‘It…happened again?’ Out of a sudden Sarah asked, her voice sounded worried. Oliver spun around towards her to find out they were eye-to-eye contact. Her glittering hazel eyes gleamed, and there was a speck of curiosity and concern at the edge of her eyes. He looked down before he proceeded with a small nod. Then he turned himself towards the table again and saw Tyler was fitfully sleeping from over his book. Sarah stood from her chair, before she made her way to one of the book shelves after she gave Oliver a pat or two on his shoulder.

Oliver couldn’t concentrate. The more he tried to perceive something written in the book, the more the images kept playing, rewound, and played back in his head. It wasn’t the first time as he had this ‘illusion’ since the trip, and he believed it won’t be the last too. What could this mean…? Was there any hidden meaning behind all of these images? Or did he possess some kind of ability to forecast something now? His brain was crammed with questions.

‘Should I do something about this…?’ He deemed inside his heart hesitantly. As he was about to stand up, Sarah came by his side, placing a book in front of him. It was about twice the thickness of the old dictionary he had at his house, and it looked…fishy.

He slowly removed the other female’s hand which was covering the title of the book and read it, ‘Secrets behind Dreams.’ Then he shot her with a weird are-you-for-real look. From his point he could see she smiled softly, before proceeding with a small nod. ‘I bet there’s something in this book that can help you out.’ Sarah said as she began flipping through the book, looking for a particular content. ‘Let see…’ As her hands busy rifling through the book, she lowered herself on the nearest chair she could reach.

Oliver then took a seat beside her, as he helped her looking from over her shoulder. As they reached about third quarter of the book, Sarah paused. Both her hands held firmly at both sides of the hardcover, before her finger pointed to a small heading at the center of the left page. ‘I think this is it.’ She whispered softly, but loud enough to express her astonishment and for Oliver to hear her. ‘Really? Where?’ The male beside him said as he took charge of the book, his mind was trying so hard to extract the information and recall the place where Sarah had pointed. 

“Alter Reality”