Beyond|Heaven in "Beyond" (Location)

Whether this is an actual place or just a landscape that exists in the judge's imagination, Beyond has certain distinct features. It has a "narrow entrance" (795) through which arrivals crowd and at which some people seem to linger in wait for others to arrive. Inhabitants seem to be able to wander there at will, and it has features of a conventional earthly landscape: a bench, for example, "inside a park" (788) where a child plays in the dust with his toys (792) and a boy named Howard "rides past every day on his pony" (794). Beyond seems like a non-denominational purgatory, if not heaven; but it contains people who have killed themselves, who carry weapons, who have money and tobacco, and who have servants, as well as middle-class and poorer folks. It is possible to leave Beyond, as the judge does, but everyone he meets seems to be content to remain there, even characters who on Earth doubted or denied the existence of an afterlife. (It's impossible to locate "Beyond" on any of our maps, so our decision to place it somewhere above the "WORLD" is best understood as an expedient, not a geo-theological assertion.)