Heaven and Hell Read Online Free PDF

entire world. It was more than just his appearance or size that frightened her, it was his aura. She could sense his evil—as though evil itself was incarnated in this fleshly form. A scream froze in her throat as he loomed closer. Then he abruptly turned away, focusing his attention on others.
    As she and the angel passed into the realm of darkness, they were swept into the great tunnel, descending ever deeper. The thundering turbulence faded away to a dead quiet calm. It was an eerie blackness, vast and lonely that surrounded them. The other souls she had seen but a moment before had vanished into the darkness of this realm beyond God’s universe. Only the radiant angel, who held her close to himself, lent any illumination or warmth. Serena was certain that without him, this would be a place of unimaginable cold.
    And there was something else about this place—an emptiness that penetrated to the depths of her soul. Never had Serena felt such a thing. It went beyond a sense of emotional depression; it was a somber melancholia that emanated from the very darkness itself. She couldn’t shake the terrible feeling; something fundamental to life was missing from this place.
    The flight continued. Though the angel’s wings swept back and forth to a slow but steady rhythm, there was not a breath of wind left in their wake. Perhaps there was no air here at all. In that case, these appendages upon the angel’s back were not wings at all in the conventional sense. Perhaps they were some sort of exotic propulsion system. No, what was she thinking of? This couldn’t be a vacuum, she was still breathing, or at least seemed to be. No, she wasn’t thinking straight.
    Serena’s attention was drawn to a point of light ahead. It looked like a star, the only star in a vast universe of total darkness. Though it seemed infinitely far off, it was growing steadily brighter.
    Within a few minutes it had come to dominate her world, pushing back the dark nothingness, bathing her in an eerie amber illumination. The bright point of light became a phosphorescent disk, an expanding ball of radiance surrounded by the nothingness of the void. She could feel its growing heat. It was indeed a star, a lone sun, the only source of heat and light here in this dismal realm.
    A moment later, a dark spot appeared near its center. This sphere of darkness grew rapidly, eventually swallowing up the great luminary, and plunging them into darkness once more. Yet as the disk loomed closer, Serena could see that it was not a true realm of darkness like that which surrounded it. Its growing rim was bathed in a halo of color, a yellow inner ring transitioning slowly to green and blue, with a violet fringe that faded into the blackness. Upon its gray disk, flashes of lightning swept through swirls of mists, while dull red illumination blanketed the landscape below. There was so much to take in. It was both frightening and awe-inspiring.
    The strange new vista vanished, obscured by swirling clouds of gray. There was a return of gravity; and an instant later, Serena felt the floor beneath her feet. The angel’s wings folded and they were walking. The mists around them parted, and Serena found herself walking down a hewn stone stairway cut into a spiraling rocky corridor. It was an almost claustrophobic environment, illuminated from above by shimmering oddly shaped crystals of fantastic size.
    “Where are we?” gasped Serena, trying to take in the unearthly environs around her.
    “A small island in the realm of outer darkness,” replied the angel, glancing only momentarily at his frightened companion.
    That wasn’t much of an answer. To someone who was new to this whole state of affairs, it was no answer at all.
    “What is outer darkness?” asked Serena, who wanted to hear another voice just as much as she wanted to hear the answer.
    “It is a spirit realm beyond your universe, beyond the creation of God,” came the reply, “a void, a place largely untouched