For A Few Souls More (Heaven's Gate Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

to catch up with the woman.
    “Hello!” he called, running towards the bridge and the spot in the trees where he estimated he had last seen her. “Please, wait.”
    He crossed the stream and crashed clumsily through the thin lower branches of the trees, their wood and fruit spraying around him like wedding rice.
    She was gone, he was sure of it. Despite the time he had gained by somehow skipping the several floors of stairs, he had been too slow and the key to understanding his new world had slipped through his fingers. He hadn’t imagined her, there was that at least; he refused to doubt what he had seen and something seen once could be seen again, even in this massive place.
    “Hello,” said a voice from above. “Are you the one who’s been shouting?”
    He looked up to see the woman sat on a branch, her feet a few inches from the top of his head.
    “Yes,” he admitted, “sorry, but I wanted to talk to you.”
    “So talk,” she smiled, swinging her legs like a child on a swing, a woman utterly at peace with her day.
    “Well, I woke up here,” he explained, “a short while ago and I don’t know where I am and what to do and...”
    “You don’t know much, do you?” she laughed.
    “I don’t know anything,” he admitted.
    “Except for one little thing, I imagine?” she asked.
    “I’m dead?”
    She nodded. “And what a relief that is, isn’t it? If I’d known that I could find such peace as this I would have tied a noose around my neck long ago.”
    “Suicide’s a sin.”
    “Sins are what we make them.”
    She swung her leg over the branch and slowly lowered herself to the ground.
    She was, Arno realised, much older than her behaviour suggested. She was a woman in her late forties, perhaps early fifties, once more returned to a state of carefree childhood. Her face bore only happy lines, creases caused by cheerfulness, the after-effects of countless smiles. Her hair was greying here and there but she wore it long and it trailed down her back like a light coloured shawl over her bright, white cotton dress.
    “Veronica,” she said, holding out her hand for him to take.
    He shook it gently. “Arno. Arno James.”
    “So you’re confused by the afterlife, Arno James?” she asked. “And so you should be. It’s a confusing, if miraculous, place.”
    “It seems so empty.”
    “That’s part of its charm, isn’t it? Who wants to spend eternity in a crowd?”
    “Well, maybe,” Arno considered himself a fairly social person, and while it would depend on the crowd he had no problem with the idea of a little company in Heaven.
    “Am I the first person you’ve met?” she asked. Arno nodded. “Oh dear, how disorganised of them. I’m sure Alonzo should have greeted you. Shown you the ropes, as I believe they say in naval circles.”
    “Alonzo?”
    “He’s in charge,” she explained, “well, no, I suppose He’s in charge.” She gestured upwards and then laughed. “How silly, I’m pointing towards the heavens even though I’m stood in them. Still, we never see Him, or hear Him for that matter. Alonzo is the manager I suppose, the human face that makes us feel at home. He really should have found you, you know.”
    “Oh.” Arno tried to shake the feeling that she somehow considered this to be his fault. “Well I have been walking around a lot.”
    “And shouting.”
    “I thought there was nobody else here, I was...” Arno decided there was no point in being less than honest, “scared.”
    “Silly boy,” she said, taking his arm and leading him back towards the stream. “There’s nothing to be scared of here. All that’s behind us now.”
    “I was exploring the building over there.”
    “The Junction. The place of travelling.”
    “Just a lot of empty rooms from what I could tell.”
    “Then you were looking at them wrong. Come on, I’ll show you.”
    She led him back towards the cloisters at the edge of the courtyard.
    “Where were you from?” he asked as the building