WE WALKED ACROSS the wide, gray plain, sandals scuffing at the hard soil.

"There's no one place called Hell," Albert was telling me. "What men have called Hell is a vacuum in which undeveloped souls find themselves after death. A level of existence which they cannot rise above because they are unable to think abstractly but can only dwell on temporal matters."

"Why did we have to go there then?" I asked. "Surely Ann--"

"I can only say, Chris, that the signals, if you will, led through there," Albert said. "And, thank God, out of there."

"Are we still following them?" I asked anxiously.

He nodded. "I believe we're getting close now."

I looked in all directions, seeing nothing but the lifeless plain. "How can we be?" I asked.

"Be patient," he told me. "A little while longer."

We walked in silence for a while. Then, thinking of him, I said, "That man who tricked me."

"A tragic figure," Albert said. "He spent the greater part of his life inflicting physical and mental torture on others. His crimes, turned back on him, have kept him prisoner in that place for centuries. The pity is that, in spite of the fact that the memory of each unspeakable act he ever committed is printed indelibly on his mind, he does not, to this moment, repent or regret his actions in the least." "Why do you call him tragic?" I asked, remembering the man's vicious, feral expression.

"Because," Albert answered, "in ancient Rome, he did not live the life of a criminal but that of an Administrator of Justice."

I could only shake my head.

"Of course the justice he administered was nothing but a travesty," Albert said. "And, now, he suffers the pain of true justice--an eye for an eye."

He stopped abruptly, looking to our right. I turned my gaze in that direction and saw, to my surprise, a range of low hills in the distance.

"She's over there," Albert said.

I looked at him with sudden joy.

His expression did not encourage joy. "Don't feel happiness," he said. "It isn't cause for celebration. Now the hardest part begins."

Strange that, after all I had experienced in the crater, I should feel a greater sense of foreboding at the sight before me even though it should have been a reassuringly familiar one--the hill which led to our home.

I looked at Albert in disturbed confusion. Why had we gone so far afield if she'd never left home? "She's here?" I asked.

"Here?" he replied.

"In our home," I said. But, even as I spoke, I knew why he had turned my question back on me.

This was not the home I'd known even though, from where I stood, it looked virtually identical.

"What is it then?" I asked.

"You'll see if you go up there," he answered. "If?" I looked at him, astounded.

"I'd rather you left," he said. "Yes, even here, where you're only steps away from her."

I shook my head.

"Chris." He took my arm and held it firmly; how thick and--earthlike, I suppose the word would be--my flesh now felt. "What happened to you in the crater only happened in your mind--and only your mind suffered. What happens here could affect your soul."

I knew he spoke the truth. Still, I shook my head again. "I have to see her, Albert," I told him.

He smiled but it was no more than a sad, accepting smile. "Remember then," he said, "resist, at all times, the despair you'll feel. Your astral body must enshroud itself even more so Ann can see and hear you. In doing so, it makes you vulnerable to everything to which she's vulnerable. You understand that?"

"Yes," I nodded.

"If you feel yourself being--how shall I put it?--drawn in," Albert said, "oppose it with all your strength. I'll try to help you but--"

I broke in. "Help me?"

"Do what I can to assist you while--"

My expression must have stopped him. He looked at me in alarm. "Chris, no," he said. "You mustn't."

"Yes." I looked up at the house, the roof of which was just visible on the hilltop. "I don't know what's up there or what's going to happen. But I have to help her by myself. I feel it," I said, not letting him speak.

He gazed at me in deep distress.

"I feel it," I repeated. "I can't explain it but I know it's so."

He stared at me in silence for a long while, obviously wondering whether he should try to argue with me.

Finally, without a word, he stepped forward and embraced me slowly. He held me for a long while, then stepped back, hands still on my shoulders, and managed a smile.

"Remember you are loved," he said. "There is a home for you and people who care."

He let his hands drop from my shoulders. "Don't let us lose you,'' he said.

I had no reply. There was no way of my. knowing what I'd face on the hill. I could only nod and try to return his smile before he turned away and started walking from me.

I watched until he'd disappeared from sight, then turned and started up the driveway toward the house. A sudden thought occurred. Driveway? Did she have a car? And, if she did, where could she drive it?

I stopped and looked around, the answer readily apparent. There was no neighborhood, no houses in the distance, no Hidden Hills, no nothing. The house was isolated.

I listened to my footsteps on the driveway as I started up again. The paving was cracked and grimy, I noticed, with tufts of yellow weeds growing through.

I thought, again, of what Albert had said before he'd left me.

"She won't believe a word you say; remember that at all times. There is no point in your trying to convince her that she's not alive. She thinks she is. She thinks that only you are dead. For that reason, it will be as well you don't identify yourself immediately but, rather, try, in some way--/ don't know what that way is, Chris--to gradually convince her who you are. I leave that to you; you know her better than I. Just remember that she won't recognize you and won't believe you if you tell her, straight out, who you are."

I was halfway up the hill now. How dreary everything appeared. I've described the driveway. In addition, all the trees that lined it were dead and leafless. Passing one, I bent a twig and felt it snap off dryly in my fingers. The ground cover looked parched, the ground itself cracked by jagged fissures. I remembered how I used to complain about the look of our hill in late summer.

It had been glorious compared to this.

I stopped and hitched back suddenly from the driveway just ahead. A snake was slithering from the weeds to cross it. As I watched, it undulated slowly across the cracked paving. I tried to see its head, to make out if it was triangular. When I couldn't, I looked at its tail to see if there was a rattle. We'd had rattlesnakes occasionally. Once, a three-footer had been living underneath a cardboard box behind the garage. I didn't move until the snake had disappeared into the brown grass to the right of the driveway. Then I started up again, wondering what would have happened if I'd extended my hand to the snake. It couldn't kill me obviously, but, at this level, would I have felt the burning poison in my veins?

Looking up now, I could see the roof of the house more clearly. It appeared shadowy and blurred and I realized that I was going to have to lower my vibration again to reach this level.

It happened of its own accord once more, a feeling like the ones I'd had before, that sensation of congealing. My walk became a trudge. A transparent film crossed my eyes and the light grew even dimmer, what little color there was grew duller yet. Through a sombrous haze, I saw the house completely solid now. It looks so depressing, I thought.

I caught myself. Already, I thought. What Albert had warned me of; a sense of despair. It was easy enough to feel, God knew, my body laden, the hillside brown and arid, the sky a dullish gray, far worse than the smoggiest ugliest day I'd ever known in life.

I wouldn't let it touch me though. I'd be with her in moments and, no matter what it entailed or how long it took, I'd do something to help her.

Something.

I reached the top of the hill and turned right toward the house where Ann now stayed.