Heather Graham Read Online Free Page A

can’t be.”
    “It is.”
    “But it—it can’t be. We’re here.”
    “We’re there, too.”
    “But…”
    “Oh, God!” Don groaned.
    “What’s the matter with you! Don’t you say that!” Cathy gasped.
    “What, what? What did I say?”
    “God. Just don’t, er, speak his name like that. Not under the circumstances … don’t you think?”
    He stared back at her. Into her wide blue eyes.
    “Under the circumstances?” he blazed back. He stared up, heavenward.
    Bitter.
    He stared back at his wife.
    “Who the hell do you think put us into these circumstances.”
    “Don, dammit, don’t say hell!”
    “Hell, Cathy, then cut the dammit!” he exclaimed.
    “Oh, my God” she protested, “you’ve done it now.”
    “I’ve done it! Done what?”
    Then he realized. Something was happening again.
    The accident scene was receding from around them. And they seemed to be rising. But they couldn’t be. Because the white was becoming so dense. They were … in snow. That was it. The snow was getting harder. Falling with incredible speed. Blanketing all around them.
    No, he realized.
    Not snow.
    Mist encircled them. Spinning, swirling, thickening.
    They were rising.
    Rising within it.
    Into the clouds.

Chapter 2
    “W E’RE DEAD. WE MUST be going to … heaven?” Cathy said, a tinge of hope in her voice.
    “We can’t be.”
    “Don, we saw our bodies. We are dead. We just need to understand what’s happening now. I was always so afraid to die. I mean, I believed in God, in an afterlife, but I—I was always afraid, I didn’t want to go alone. You know how I hate going places alone.”
    “You’re not alone. I’m with you.”
    “Are you afraid?”
    “Yes.”
    “Think we may be going to heaven?”
    “I hope. Surely, we can’t be going to … hell?” Don murmured. “I wasn’t great, but I wasn’t that bad.”
    “Do you think all our sins play out before us now like a motion picture?”
    “I hope not.”
    “I think hell is down. And very hot,” Cathy assured him. “You’re not hot, are you?”
    “No, no, but in all honesty, I wasn’t that bad, but I’m not so sure I deserve heaven. Maybe I’m just rising by hanging on to your shirttails.”
    Cathy smiled. Her fingers curled around his. “What makes you think I was that good? But we’re together, right?”
    He nodded. “Maybe we’ll just float for eternity,” he said worriedly.
    “I don’t think so,” Cathy said.
    Because they had reached some kind of a strange landing.
    It was worse than the Christmas Eve rush on Fifth Avenue.
    The flooring was nothing but mist; none of the hundreds of … creatures? … rushing about on it seemed to notice, or to have any doubt of the solidity of what lay under their feet. And wings.
    They looked like people. Maybe they were people. Except for the ones with wings.
    “Wings mean angels, right?” Don whispered to Cathy.
    “I think.”
    “Or birds,” Don said.
    Cathy elbowed him. “I think it’s time to be very careful about what we say.” Her fingers still laced with his, she looked around, turning them both in a full circle.
    The cloud-landing seemed to stretch on forever in all directions. There were corridors within it, all formed from the same misty white stuff, and thousands of people—or angels or, as Don was thinking of them, humanoid- type creatures—were hurrying about. They all seemed to be moving with purpose. Their appearances varied greatly; many were dressed like Cathy and Don, in winter coats and boots. Others’ outfits made the gathering look almost like a costume party. To Cathy’s left was a group in bikinis and cutoffs, to her right, a couple in exquisite medieval dress, probably from around the period of Henry II. There were people in caftans, evening gowns, tuxes, dungarees, flapper outfits from the roaring twenties, T-shirts in tie-dye colors advertising the Grateful Dead, anything, anything at all that might be imagined. Those wearing the varied costumes walked about