by Maren Smith
"This is not happening,” she groaned. “I am not dead and this is not happening."
"Don't be afraid.” Monica hooked arms with Mallory as they started toward the funnel. “It's a short trip, relatively speaking."
"Wait!” Mallory dug her incorporeal heels into the hospital's roof. It surprised her when they actually stopped. “I don't want to go!"
"There's nothing to worry about. Think of this as ... well, as a well-deserved retirement. Your labors are done. Now you get to relax. Go fishing. And travel. Extensive travel."
Mallory pulled back. “But I'm not ready!"
It was a ridiculous statement, and Mallory knew it. How much more ‘ready’ than stone cold dead did one have to be?
Monica sighed. “They rarely are."
"But you don't understand,” Mallory said. “There's so much I haven't done. Isn't there a rule someplace? How can I die when I haven't accomplished anything important in life. Like—” Her mind went blank; she floundered. “Like buying kitty litter. Nuts! I knew I was forgetting something."
"Come along.” Monica started for the tunnel again.
"But what about Charley? I can't leave my cat. I'm all he has!” It was really the other way around, but Mallory couldn't bring herself to tell this beautiful woman (who'd likely had dozens of family and friends to mourn her) that Mallory's own social life revolved solely around the longhaired, black and grey feline that kept her apartment rodent-free.
"He'll be fine,” Monica said. “Your next door neighbor loves the cat. She'll take good care of him."
"No, wait!” Again, Mallory dug in her heels. “What about all the things I haven't done? Like—I—I haven't raced across Saudi Arabia on a camel. Or climbed the Alps. Or protected the rain forest. I haven't even saved a whale! Can you get into Heaven without saving a whale?"
Monica's grip on her arm only tightened. “Earth is for the living and Heaven the dead. Rules are rules. There simply is no place for you down here."
Mallory pulled at her imprisoned hand. She hated whining. She refused to whine. She failed miserably.
"Please,” she begged. “I can make one."
"You had your chance,” Monica said gently. “Now it's up to the Powers That Be to decide what's to be done with you. Plead your case eloquently enough, and they may find a way to let you come back. We've got plenty of employment opportunities open right now—everything from guides to Harbingers of Doom. We've even got an opening for a guardian angel if you're interested in that field of work."
"Do you think they'd let me do that?"
"You're a good person.” Monica squeezed her hand. “I think your chances are also good. Trust me, Mallory. There's nothing to be afraid of."
Still Mallory hesitated, but Monica would not be denied. The guide stepped into the mouth of the funnel and pulled Mallory in behind her. With a sensation not unlike riding an elevator, the funnel drew them upward.
The funnel itself was quite lovely. The setting sun painted the clouds in hues of orange and pink. Were there sunsets where she was going, or would this be the last one Mallory ever witnessed? She watched the play of colors changing as the sun moved across the sky, not wanting even to blink lest she miss one nuance of nature's magnificent display.
They had not journeyed far when the funnel ended and the clouds parted to reveal a second, larger tunnel. Rather than trail upward, it ran horizontally left to right like an extra long hallway as far as Mallory could see in either direction.
Stretching up her hand, Mallory strained on tiptoes to touch the cloud ceiling above her. She tried not to sound disappointed. “Gee, I always thought Heaven would be—I don't know—bigger, maybe wider than this."
"This is only the Crossroads,” Monica explained. “Everyone comes through here at some point in their journey."
"Oh, I see. The right takes you to Heaven. Left and you're Purgatory bound. You'd think there'd be a sign or something."
"I am the sign,” Monica said dryly. “Come along."
They started walking. To the right, Mallory was encouraged to note.
Just then, another hole opened in the sun-colored wall before them. A teenaged boy in a leather jacket and spiked, green hair appeared through the clouds. He had a silver ring in his right nostril and two more through his eyebrow. His guide, a petite brunette with large brown eyes, giggled into her hand as she led him onto the Crossroads. Unlike Mallory, the boy did not appear the slightest bit confused or apprehensive.
"So.” He kissed the brunette's hand as she guided him to the right. “Do you, like, have a phone number or something? I don't suppose you want to go out this Friday, huh?"
The brunette giggled again and Mallory watched the duo stroll off together. With a stab of regret, she suddenly realized she had never fallen in love, either. She drew a line in the tunnel floor with the tip of her sneaker. A section of cloud swirled up to twine in ethereal wisps round her ankle and calf, but no hole magically appeared to take her back down to Earth. Her shoulders drooped a little.
"Ready?” Monica asked.
"Do I get to go home, if I say no?” Mallory shook her leg until the wisps dissipated.
"You are going home.” Monica took her arm and they continued on.
As they journeyed, periodically the cloud wall parted to allow the passage of other guides and their frightened or confused, joyful or relieved human counterparts onto the Crossroads. Old and young, male and female, people of all sizes, shapes, ethnic origins, and backgrounds began to pass Mallory by. Like lemmings headed for the sea, they all turned to the right and started walking. At one point, she was even passed by four NASA astronauts in spacesuits and helmets. The words ‘Huguenot 2013’ were stitched in black letters an inch tall on their sleeves.
When they had walked perhaps half a mile, Mallory began to notice that new arrivals on the Crossroads now were dressed more like an old photograph Mallory had once seen of her Depression-era grandparents. The changes in dress were minute at first, but, after a mile or so, quickly became more obvious.
And it wasn't merely the change in dress that caught her attention. Mallory started when she heard a woman suddenly cry out behind her. She turned in time to see a young man drop down onto one knee and tug a not-so-willing young lady face down across that makeshift lap. As Mallory watched in shock, the man yanked up her skirts, jerked her panties down to her knees, and raised his hand ominously high above the poor girl's wiggling rump.
When their guide, a pretty young blonde, tapped him hesitantly on the shoulder, he turned his angry glare on her and growled, “Don't try to stop me unless you want to be next, young lady."
The little blonde immediately backed up a step, worrying her bottom lip. Then, from the folds of her gown, she pulled out a long wooden hairbrush and held it out to him.
The man hesitated only a moment before he took it. And as Mallory watched in open-mouthed shock, he laid a barrage of hearty smacks all across the poor girl's bare bottom. She screamed at the very first crack of wood against bare skin, and then began to cry. The entire Crossroads echoed with the steady crack! crack! smack! of the hairbrush, as well as the wails of the girl being so soundly punished.
"Do something!” Mallory cried. Except for a precursory glance here and there, the people around her had already dismissed the scene and started walking again. Not one person seemed inclined to help the woman, whose once pale bottom was now a blazing, sizzling shade of red.
"I have absolutely no desire to be next,” Monica said as she took Mallory's arm and led her away. “I doubt you do either."
"But—but can he do that?"
"Well, she did get them both killed, you know.” Monica didn't seem the slightest bit sympathetic.
Monica dragged Mallory along behind her, quickly putting distance between them and the spanking taking place. With every step, the hardy smacking sounds grew a little fainter and yet, somehow, seemed to intensify. The girl's wails quickly turned to heart-rending sobs, and finally the spanking stopped all togeth
er. Mallory turned around again, but there were too many people for her to see the couple so far behind them. She swallowed hard, a little surprised that she could still walk on legs as shaky as her own had become. Maybe she was headed for Hell after all.
"Don't worry,” Monica said. “She'll have to stand with her nose to the wall for a while, but Doug's a good man and he loves her dearly. I'm sure he'll comfort her, too."
The further they went, the stranger the people became. It was like watching a play in which costumes of the ages was the only theme. And Mallory wasn't the only one to give her guide trouble, either. An aged miner stubbornly clung to the reins of a mangy brown mule and refused to move.
Half-buried beneath mounds of animal furs and dirty buckskins, he tugged at the snow-white bush of a beard that all but obscured his weather-wrinkled face. “I ain't budging! If Whiskey cain't come with me, than I ain't a-gonna go! I done told that ornery critter we was gonna strike it rich together and that's just what we're a-gonna do! Ya ain't about to make a liar outta me, are ya, gal?"
Whiskey turned soulful brown eyes to Mallory, as she drew abreast of them. She knew exactly how the miner felt. She patted the mule's flank as she passed, already missing Charley. They continued on in silence for another half mile. Cowboys and Indians gave way to samurai, musketeers, and women in wide pannier skirts. One in particular had a hairstyle a good two feet in height, decorated with a bird's nest halfway up and topped with a small, wooden boat.
"How far does this tunnel go?” Mallory asked.
"As far as it takes to get back to the Beginning."
"The beginning of what?"
"Time and creation,” Monica said. “Where else would Heaven be?"
Mallory had not given it much thought. Outer space, she supposed, since people generally aimed their prayers to the sky. Though perhaps outer space was too crowded for God, what with all the UFOs, space aliens, and such.
Booming thunder rolled through the tunnel, and the clouds surrounding them turned midnight black. For one horrible second, Mallory was certain her blasphemous thought had just earned her a one-way ticket to the far left of the tunnel. But then a hole opened in the floor near her feet and a red-haired woman clawed her way onto the Crossroads.
"Free!” she cried, her green eyes wide, though not as much in panic as it seemed in victory. She shoved past Mallory and Monica, hugging her own shoulders as she twirled around in circles, the cloud floor darkening under her feet. “Finally, I am free!"
Her laughter bordered upon hysteria as she ran toward that destination Mallory had yet to reach.
When no guide immediately followed, Monica cautiously peered down into the hole. Her face was grim when she looked up again. She shouted, “Somebody grab her! She's not ready yet!"
"What's going on?” Mallory asked.
"Her body hasn't died,” Monica said. “She will have to go back. Wait for me here."
Monica ran after the red-haired woman. For the first time since her own arrival on the Crossroads, Mallory found herself alone. She looked down at her feet, bare inches from the gaping hole. She could see the funnel extending far below her, with a picture of life too distant to clearly make out at the other end.
Mallory squinted. She couldn't be sure, but she thought she saw people moving way down there at the end. Not that it mattered. At least it was a life.
"Shame on you, Mallory,” she said. “Don't even think it."
She was dead and that was another woman's body, another woman's life.
But the redhead obviously didn't want it, and Mallory really did. At her feet lay the perfect opportunity, a second chance to have all those things she'd missed the first time around. Mallory had always taken for granted that she would live to a ripe old age. But now, as she thought back on her mere twenty-two years, it all seemed ... well, wasted. How could she go to Heaven, look into her father's eyes, and tell him that she'd wasted her life. Especially when cancer had robbed him of his. She wouldn't be at all surprised if her father borrowed the hairbrush from that man several miles back, and then the Crossroads would echo with the sound of her sobs as a measure of regret was paddled into her behind. That he had never spanked her before didn't matter. For something like this, there was always a first time.
Mallory stared down the length of the dark funnel. It was wrong to consider this, and she knew it. But what guarantee did she have that the Powers That Be would send her back? What if they made her stay here? Forever.
Mallory glanced over her shoulder. Monica and the other guides had already caught up with the redhead and, though she struggled fiercely and it took three to hold her, they were slowly dragging her back.
The urge to shake some sense into the woman was almost as strong as Mallory's urge to fall to her knees and beg to be allowed to take her place.
Mallory did neither, however. She bit her bottom lip instead and looked back down at the hole. Perhaps the Powers That Be had arranged for this to happen. The excuse was nothing more than a convenient conscience salve. In all likelihood, this blackened hole at her feet was Mallory's last chance to live. And this time, to live the way she should have done the first time. No missed opportunities, and no regrets.
As if sensing something amiss, Monica looked up and her gaze locked with Mallory's. Monica's eyes widened. She knew. Her face creased with disappointment. “Oh no, Mallory. Don't!"
Mallory dove head first into the hole. Thunder exploded through the clouds. The funnel that had been so gentle before was now an angry tornado, spinning, churning, battering her with its fury and pulling her rapidly back to Earth. Down to that new life that waited so far below.
The last thing Mallory heard was the red-haired woman's triumphant laughter as flame-hot agony tore her body in two.
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Chapter Two
England, 1587
Castle Cadhla
The pain was unbearable, ripping through Mallory's body and leaving no nerve unmolested. She screamed once from shock and confusion as she fought to sit up in the huge four-poster bed and then again from sheer agony the instant she tried to move. How could anything hurt so much?
Mallory writhed, raking the hot, sweat-and-blood-soaked sheets with her nails, thrashing her head from side to side on the mound of pillows that kept her half-propped upright. The blankets had been kicked to one side and the hem of her ankle-length nightdress was rolled up nearly to her breasts, exposing her feet and legs and—most importantly—the huge, round girth of her belly, painted orange by the flickering candlelight.
A haggard old woman stood at her bedside, wringing excess water from a damp cloth, which she then pressed to Mallory's face. Her gray hair was falling out of its simple bun and the full-length white apron she wore over her plain brown dress was soaked down the front with blood. She looked both exhausted and worried. “Your Grace, if you don't stop fighting us, you are going to die!"
"God willing, she will,” said another even older woman. She sat a fair distance away on a short stool, her back to the flames burning high in the stone fireplace behind her. Her blue dress shimmered. It was the most authentic Elizabethan gown Mallory had ever seen outside of a museum. A variety of jewelry sparkled in the light, emerald rings on both withered hands, gold hawk-shaped brooch pinned at her bosom, twin pearl and diamond necklaces that hung low to her waist, and an elaborate ruby and silver comb that crowned the coiffure of her completely gray hair. An ebony cane was braced on the floor between her knees with hands folded demurely over the ivory handle. Her mouth pinched and hard, she watched Mallory with a look of disdain that bordered on hatred. “It would be better for all involved if she did die."
A flicker of irritation crossed the first woman's face. She quickly turned her back as though she dared not show it and dipped the cloth in water to wash Mallory's face in earnest now. “Listen to Doctor Wilcox, Your Grace. You shall be fine.” But her voice trembled and worry lined her face.
"Who are you people?” Mallory demanded, pan
ting through the heat and hurt. The pain surged again and she screamed, “What's happening to me?"
"Push!” The doctor—the only other person in the room—snapped at her. Both his dark hair and narrow beard were streaked with gray. His brown eyes were lined with age, red-rimmed from exhaustion and, judging by the fumes on his breath, too much drink. He stood just behind the first woman with one hand between Mallory's splayed knees and the other pressing down upon her swollen belly. His entire front, from the sleeves of his rolled up shirt to his dark britches, was covered in blood.
Hers, Mallory suddenly realized. She stared at her stomach in shock. Before her eyes, it rippled as another contraction moved through it and pain chewed into her.
"Push, blast you!” Wilcox shouted. “Bess, help me!"
Bess flung the cool cloth aside. She grabbed Mallory's shoulders and heaved her upright as another surge of raw agony tore through her. It built from her spine, circled her midriff, and chewed right through her abdomen as if with needle-like teeth. Mallory screamed.
"Push!” Wilcox bellowed again.
And, mindless from torment and rising hysteria, Mallory obeyed. The pain was excruciating; the heat in the room stifling. She could barely breathe and the sweat that ran off her forehead stung her eyes. Her nightgown was so damp and hot it felt as if it steamed against her skin. She screamed through gritted teeth, eyes squeezed tightly shut, every muscle in her body drawn taut as she strained against the pain.
