"GENTLEMEN?"

AT THE sound of the man's voice, I opened my eyes. He stood before the bench, addressing us. "I'm afraid you'll have to leave," he said. "This is a private park."

I stared at him. A private park in Summerland? I began to speak but Albert cut me off. "Of course," he said. "We didn't realize."

"That's quite all right," the man replied. He was middle-aged, distinguished looking, dressed with care. "If you'll leave immediately," he told us, "no more need be said."

"Right away," Albert agreed, rising from the bench. I looked at him, not understanding. It seemed unlike him to allow this man to exclude us from a park in Summerland without a word of reaction. I stood and began to speak again but Albert took my arm and whispered, "Never mind."

The man observed us with polite remoteness as we started toward the gateway.

"What is this?" I asked.

"It wouldn't help to challenge him," Albert told me. "He wouldn't understand. These people here are in a strange condition. In life, they never did actual harm to anyone and are causing no harm here--hence the relative graciousness of their surroundings.

"On the other hand, there is no way to pierce their shell of affectation. They live a limited existence which they, nonetheless, believe to be completely appropriate to their class.

"They think they're in a 'smart' location, you see, a spot restricted to those of their social standing. They have no conception of the fact that, in Summerland, there are no sets or cliques. They are living a delusion of group superiority which words cannot affect."

I shook my head as we left the park. "Grotesque," I said.

"It's nothing compared to what you face if we continue on."

We walked in silence for a while. Somehow, I sensed that we were not continuing toward the edge of Summerland but circling where we were, Albert giving me time to make up my mind.

At last, I did.

"Since the risk is mine, not Ann's," I said, "I want to continue. She can only be helped."

"Except," he reminded me, "in the sense that, if you become imprisoned in the etheric world, your reunion could be delayed--" He stopped and I knew he'd been about to tell me how long our reunion might be delayed. A hundred years? A thousand? Fear took hold of me again. Was I foolish to attempt this? Wasn't twenty-four years preferable to --?

The decision came at that: the thought of Ann alone in God only knew what dreadful place for nearly a quarter of a century. I couldn't let that happen without trying to help.

I wouldn't.

"All right," Albert said, knowing my decision as I made it. "We'll go on then. And I admire your devotion, Chris. You may not realize it yet but what you're about to do is very courageous."

I didn't reply but, as we walked on, realized that, subtly, we had altered our direction and were, once more, moving toward the edge of Summerland.

Ahead, I saw a small church. Like the park, it was not unattractive yet lacked that perfection which marked everything I'd seen before in Summerland. Its color was a dingy brown, its brickwork chipped and faded. As we drew closer to it, I began to hear a congregation singing. "Weary of earth and laden with my sins. I gaze at heaven and long to enter in."

I looked at Albert, startled. "But they're here," I said.

"They don't know it," he replied. "So they spend their time singing dreary hymns and listening to dreary sermons."

I felt a sense of anxiety pervading me again. If it could be like this in Summerland itself, what would it be like when we'd left this realm entirely?

Albert stopped.

We faced a stretch of flinty ground with patches of grass that looked dry and wasted. "We'd better change our clothing now," he said. "Wear shoes."

I was about to ask him why, then knew he wouldn't have suggested it if it weren't a necessity. I concentrated on the change. The fluttering sensation on the surface of my skin seemed slower here, as though it labored. I looked down, seeing, with a start, that, once more, I was wearing the outfit I'd had on the night of the accident.

I turned my gaze to Albert. He was wearing a blue shirt and trousers, a beige jacket.

"The clothes I was wearing when they took me to the hospital," he said.

I felt myself grimace as he spoke. "Is it going to be like this from now on?'' I asked. The air felt liquid and granular in my throat.

"We'll have to start adjusting to the changes in environment," he told me. "Visualize yourself as you'd have to be to exist here without discomfort."

I tried and, gradually, began to have the impression of feeling myself thicken. The feeling was subtle, but distinct. The texture of my flesh took on a certain density and now the air was breathable. How different in my lungs though, no longer crystal clear and invigorating. This air was heavy. It supported my existence, nothing more.

I looked around the countryside as we walked on--if countryside is the word for what I saw. No fruitful landscape here; only barren ground, dying grass, stunted, virtually defoliated trees, no sign of water. And no houses which came as little surprise. Who would, willingly, reside here? was my thought.

"You'll see those who--willingly--reside in places which are so appalling that, by comparison, this is a place of beauty," Albert said.

I tried not to shudder. "Are you trying to dissuade me?" I asked.

"Prepare you," he said. "Even so, no matter what I say, you cannot possibly envision what you may be forced to see."

Again, I was about to question him, again decided not to do it. He knew; I didn't. I had better not waste energy contesting anything he told me. I needed my resources for whatever lay ahead.

What lay immediately ahead was a desolate prairie-like expanse. As we walked across it, the turf grew less and less resilient and I noted the beginning of jagged cracks in the ground. There were no breezes now. The air lay still and weighted, getting cooler as we progressed. Or was it retrogressed?

"Am I imagining the light fading again?" I asked.

"No," he answered quietly. His tone of voice seemed, to me, to be declining with the look of the terrain, growing more withdrawn as moments passed. "Except it isn't fading to help you rest. It's fading because we're almost to the lower realm--which is, also, called the darker realm."

There was a man ahead. He stood impassive, watching our approach. I thought that he was someone who, for some unknowable reason, chose to live there.

I was wrong.

"This is where the lower realm begins," he told us. "It's no place for the curious."

"I'm here to help someone," I said.

The man looked at Albert who nodded and said, "That's right."

"You aren't entering just to look," the man said warningly.

"No," Albert told him. "We're searching for this man's wife to try and help her."

The man nodded and put his hand on our shoulders. "Go with God then," he said. "And be alert at all times. Be aware."

Albert nodded again and the man removed his hands from our shoulders.

The very second we crossed the border I was uncomfortable, oppressed, filled with an almost overwhelming desire to turn and flee back to that safer place. I had to will myself from retreating.

"Tell me if you want to go back," Albert said. Had he gotten my thought or was it obvious what I'd be thinking at that moment?

"All right," I said.

"No matter when you feel it," he added.

I knew, then, that he couldn't reach my mind anymore. "We have to speak aloud now, don't we?" I said.

"Yes," he answered. It was disconcerting to see his lips move again. Somehow, that sight did more to convince me we were in the lower realm than anything I felt or saw.

What did I see? Almost nothing, Robert. We walked through a colorless vista, the dull sky blending with the ground until it seemed as though we trudged across a gray continuum.

"Is there no scenery here at all?" I asked.

"Nothing permanent," he said. "Whatever you may see--a tree, a bush, a rock--will only be a thought form created by some person on this level. The overall appearance represents the composite mental image of its inhabitants."

"This is their composite mental image?" I asked. Soundless; hueless; lifeless.

"It is," he said.

"And you work here?" I felt stunned that anyone who had the choice would elect to work in this forbidding place.

"This is nothing," was all he said.

I was not mistaken in my observation. His voice was less than it had been in Summerland. Clearly, the inertness of this place affected even speech. What did / sound like, I wondered?

"It's getting cold," I noticed then.

"Conceive of warmth around you," Albert said.

I tried, discovering that, gradually, the cold became less harsh.

"Is it better?" Albert asked.

I said it was.

"Remember though," he told me, "as we travel further, it will require more and more adaptive concentration on your part to adjust to the effects of the environment. A concentration which will grow harder and harder for you to command." I looked around, a new uneasiness beginning. "It's getting dark now," I said.

"Conceive of light around you," Albert told me.

Conceive of light? I thought. I tried although I couldn't understand how it could help.

It did however. Bit by bit, the shadows gathering about us started to lighten.

"How does it work?" I asked.

"Light, here, is obtained exclusively by the action of thought on the atmosphere," he told us. "Let there be light is more than just a phrase. Those who come to this realm in an unprogressed state are quite literally 'in the dark,' their minds not advanced enough to produce the light which would enable them to see."

"Is that why they can't go higher?" I asked, thinking uneasily of Ann. "Because they actually can't see to find their way?"

"That can be part of it," he said. "However, even if they could see with their eyes, their systems would be unable to survive in a higher realm. The ah", for instance, would be so rarefied to them that breathing would be painful if not impossible."

I looked around the bleak, unending countryside. "This could be called Winterland," I said, the sight depressing me.

"It could," he agreed. "Except that memories of winter on earth are, often, pleasant ones. Nothing here is pleasant.",.

"Does your work here ... succeed?" I asked.

He sighed and, glancing at him in the nocturnal light, I saw that his expression was one of melancholy; a look I'd never seen on his face before. "You know, from personal experience, how difficult it is to make people on earth believe in afterlife," he said. "It is far more difficult here. The reception I've usually gotten is that of a naive church worker in the most vile of ghettos, my words greeted with scornful laughter, coarse jokes, verbal abuse of every kind. It isn't hard to understand why so many dwellers in this realm have been here for ages."

I looked at him with such dismay that he looked surprised, then, realizing what he'd said, suddenly repentant. Even he had lost perception here. "I'm sorry, Chris," he said. "I didn't mean that Ann would be here that long. I've told you how long."

He sighed again. "You see what I meant about the atmosphere of this place affecting one's thinking. Despite what I believe, I've already let it work on my convictions. The larger truth, of course, is that every soul will eventually rise. I've never heard of any spirit being permanently abandoned no matter how evil. And your Ann is far from evil. All I intended to say is that there are misguided souls who have been in this realm for what amounts--to them at any rate-- to an eternity."

He said no more and I did not pursue it. I didn't want to think of Ann being held here endlessly--or of myself a prisoner inside the lower realm.